How do you tell which chicks you have held?

[tink]

How about having a piece of cardboard that seperates the area they are in. As you hold one move it to the other side. Then when you are all done just life out the cardboard.
tink

 

[Lyn862]

Thank you for the help. Now I have several ideas to try. I'm laughing about the idea of counting them when they are asleep. I ordered 5 barred rocks, 5 astralorps, and 5 ameraucanas. The farm store only charged me for 14 chicks when the order came in. When I counted them, I only got 14 too. So I tried to figure out which breed was short one. I would get 5 of each breed. So I would count them all again and came up with 14 again, and again. I finally seperated them into boxes. I was sure I was counting some chick as two different breeds. Nope. I had 5 in each box. As I put them back in the breeder, I counted each one to make sure I hadn't forgotten my 5 times tables. There were 15!! So I went back to the farm store today and paid them for the other chick. I was beginning to think I had lost my mind because I couldn't count to 15 anymore.

 

[Gindee77]

I've used all of the above methods for marking chicks for one reason or another. The easiest is to put them in a separate box or holding pen as you get done handling them. Zip ties work to mark them but we took off the ones we had on the chicks I thought were males. It was hard to cut the ties off without hurting the chicks. We managed without any injuries or harm but it was a difficult thing to do. Make sure if you use ties that you leave plenty of grow-room and remove them before they fill all that grow-room in! I marked the heads of chicks that were acting sick from eating too much bedding. I lost all of them!

The last one today.

Luckily the rest are happy and healthy!! I can tell all my EE's apart now easily...and at first they all looked alike. I still can't tell my Golden Comet girls apart. And I have two Buff Orps that are marked with magic marker because they are difficult to tell apart. One on the head and one between the shoulder blades!