I'm stymied.

[chickenlittle21]

I have searched the web over and can't for the life of me figure out what cross/breed this 7 week old chick is. Any help? She's also about the size of my barred rocks, so I doubt she would be a bantam.

Ooo! I got it! She might be a barnevelder!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Ooo! I got it! She might be a barnevelder!

Definitely not a barnevelder. Coloring is wrong.

 

[chickenlittle21]

Definitely not a barnevelder. Coloring is wrong.

You sure?

 

[Gray Farms]

Pattern is way off for Barnevelder

 

[CSolis]

@sadness child is right. They are all males except for the Asian black one.

Coloring and head looks the same for the juvenile barnvelder, but the pattern on the feathers doesn't match.

 

[CSolis]

Ok, more time spent on researching BRs gave me the following indicators.

1. Comb size and coloring are not reliable indicators.
2. Male BRs have a feather ending in a black point. (none of mine do)
3. All of my BRs have dark markings on their legs, and are yellowish in general.

In addition to all that, when I went out today to give treats and fill the feeder, there were more hen sounds, and not a single roo sound yet. Not a single cockadoodle or a doo. When I look at images of other BRs, mine seem huge and more well developed at 7-8 weeks of age than most all of them I find in photos on the web. (Might have been all those danged mealy worms I gave as treats to bribe them.)

Just going to have to wait another four weeks or so to see if any of them start developing longer pointy feathers on the saddle and collar.

 

[Sadness Child]

My Jersey Giant cockerel started crowing at 8 weeks old

 

[CSolis]

My Jersey Giant cockerel started crowing at 8 weeks old

I'm hoping if there's a guy in the bunch, he'll do the same.. And just for fun's sake, here's the chicks at 3 days of age. Head dots in full display. From 'My life and times: sexing barred rocks': Those chicks having headspots irregular in outline and scattered in appearance are males while the females tend to have headspots with more regular outlines. The author claimed an accuracy of 90percent or better when considering only the headspot and 95percent if the color of the legs was included in the consideration.

Too bad I never thought to take photos of legs and dots.

 

[CSolis]

So, and update since the kids are 11 weeks old. I know 3 are definitely BRs (full bred) and two are BR mixes since they look like BRs but are definitely much darker in color and one of them has a tell tail sign (pun intended since the sign is on the tail. One has white legs with black, and the other yellow legs with black. Here's our tell tail sign.. Oh and the two BR mixes are larger than the pure BRs

 

[CSolis]

As far as the 3 BRs go, one is slightly smaller in build, has his head feathers upright all the time, and has larger more pronounced earlobes than the other too.. he's developing the more slender pointed feathers in the saddle area, and is my morning alarm clock while the other two BRs still have more wide rounded feathers in the saddle area. Also Henri doesn't have nearly as much black on the legs as the other two... One of the two BR mixes has also sounded off, trying to determine which one since he shuts up when I get close.. except Henri (pronounced Onreeee) Le Cock, the BR cockerel. And yes, I'm getting around to naming them one by one. The one in the previous post for now is Charlie Sheen. And another I'll post next became Henrietta Brown.