How To Sex A Chicken - Wisdom From An Old Timer

[nurse1]

Trying to sex my barred rock and the polish. Anyone have an opinion ?

 

[chickengeorgeto]

hahaha. You're funny! (Because isn't this exactly what they do?)
Please pardon my newbieness!

Yea, don't get me wrong but the big bad evil poultry companies hired Japanese guest workers who on average made 90¢ per chick and who sexed 8,000 to 10,000 day old chicks per day by
squeezing the poop out of baby chickens' butts, peering inside the vent and then quickly making an educated guess about the sexual orientation of that day old chick. You do the math. Of course as more people entered the field the pay went down, that old supply and demand thing don't you know?

Believe me if Americans would do this work as well for only a little MORE money, the Japanese guest workers would be out of a job because of all the other costs involved. But most Americans would rather drink molten Plutonium with a Cyanide chaser than make over 5 times the American median household annual wage, if earning that income required a pampered American to stare at the junk inside a baby chickens' butt for 8 hours a day.

BTW, to graduate from baby chicken sex education class each Japanese student had to determine the sex of 400 day old pullets with a 100% accuracy rate and 400 day old cockerels with a 97% accuracy rate. In this final exam the students were only given 30 minutes to differentiate each sex. In that length of time I doubt that most American workers could locate the massage parlor that their union steward was hanging out in to lodge a grievance with the hatchery management that the assembly line was moving to fast. Because in the workers' eyes the day old chicks are still going to have the same sexual orientation next week as they have today, so like what's the big rush?

Don't get me wrong. Unions have their place and use but when union hurt society as a whole then they become as bad as, if not worst than management who must keep on their smiley
face no matter what.

 

[Sisters Farms]

The lady I buy my chickens from says if there are "buttons" on their legs near the feet they are roosters. Is this true?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

The lady I buy my chickens from says if there are "buttons" on their legs near the feet they are roosters. Is this true?

The "buttons" she would be referring to would be spur buds - and it is not a reliable way to sex birds as females can develop spurs and males can go their whole lives without ever having them. Spurs are most common in males, yes, but to as a gender determination method I would consider this fairly unreliable.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'd agree. I process a lot of pullets, hens, cockerels, and roosters. I use the feet in broth, cleaning the feet by scalding them then taking the claws and skin off. All of them have a spur button. On some of the young pullets it can be a little hard to find but it’s there if you look. On some of them it is pretty pronounced. It can vary a lot on the cockerels too though it is usually more pronounced. I would not depend on this as a sexing method at hatch or even later. At four months it can be a real strong clue but I’ve seen some pullets that age with pretty nice spurs and some cockerels where they are not real pronounced.

 

[Sisters Farms]

Sexing confuses me. At what age can you start telling or trying to sex

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Sexing confuses me. At what age can you start telling or trying to sex

It depends on the breed/bird. There are certain tells that become obvious at different times - and it often comes down to using multiple clues combined with the age of the bird to sort it out. Some breeds or hybrids are easy to tell based on color - not only sex links but breeds where the color pattern is distinctly different between males and females (one example would be breeds that have males who are black breasted, there are certain characteristically male/female patterns that one sees in Easter Eggers, even in breeds like BO you'll see distinct "patches" of darker shaded, shiny feathering on the body compared to the more uniform coloration of a female, etc), for pea combed breeds the early visibility of the number of rows of peas can be an early indicator. The differences in hackle/saddle feathers where males develop the long/pointy feathers while females remain blunt/rounded develop as the birds hit chicken puberty (12+ weeks). For *most* breeds comb/wattle growth and reddening before 12-14 weeks would be indicative of male (before 8 weeks is all but certain). Leg thickness, overall posture and build, etc are also things that fit into this puzzle. There are lots of clues - it's a matter of putting them all together. Some breeds, or individual birds within the breed, make their gender obvious early on - others will keep you guessing. The old saying about "You'll know when it lays or crows" is often repeated, but for the most part you can tell before that if you know what you are looking at/for.....and that comes with time and experience.

ETA - then there is that pesky denial that can often cloud the assessment because you really, really want a particular bird to be a particular gender and this can cause you to second guess or gloss over the signs that you are seeing.

Of course, the best way to tell is to start a thread here on BYC and post your birds on https://www.backyardchickens.com/f/15/what-breed-or-gender-is-this so we can all see your birds, because we never get tired of looking at chickens ;-)

 

[Ridgerunner]

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=48329

Check out the first post in this thread. It can help quite a bit.

Certain breeds can be sexed at hatch or real strong clues give you a good indication, the size of the spot on a Barred Rock or Dominique, for example. Some crosses can be sexed at hatch by down color, leg color, wing feathers, or some other sex linked characteristic. The parents have to be set up for this genetically. It does not work on all chicks.

On rare occasions I can tell at hatch that a specific chick will be a male by posture and attitude. That does not happen often and I cannot tell that one will be a female at that age. Usually by five weeks certain traits start showing through as mentioned I that thread. But I have had several cases where I could not tell for sure until around four months.

I’m usually a lot better than this, but earlier this year I tried to sex chicks when I moved them from my brooder to the grow-out coop and run at five weeks. I thought I had 6 male and 6 female. Nope. I wound up with 3 male and 9 female. Three of those females had the heavy legs and general body configuration more typical of males. Sometimes it is pretty clear pretty early and sometimes you are left guessing for quite a while. It does get easier with experience.

 

[Sisters Farms]

Her are my two new Chocolate Orpingtons. Two weeks old. Male or female? GO........

 

[Ridgerunner]

At two weeks it is just a guess. From its stance and thick upright neck, I’d guess the second one could be male. I would not even hazard a guess on the first one and the second could still go either way.