Lets play guess the chickens 🐔

[Kaford]

Yea, it's mostly the color, but the size is also useful for some of those breeds with naturally dark skin. Your cockerels will turn red something like 3-6 weeks, but your pullets will turn red when they are about ready to start laying, which is something like 18 weeks.

As for size, it seems to be much less definitive, but at roughly 8 weeks, checking for a decently formed comb (read that as not a scrunched up something on their head, but actually looks like a comb) is more likely to be a roo. At this stage you tend to have a bit of a sagging wattle too rather than just a chin-strap line on the pullets.

After this stage, I go on to look at feathering. You have your saddle feathers coming in at around 10-12 weeks. And your hackle/sickle feathers coming in around 16 weeks or so.

https://imgur.com/0pA1Vqg

Oh my goodness thank you so much for explaining all of that! I'm gonna go out and look at them all now and see if I can distinguish them. Just when I thought I had certain things figured out.. chicks threw me through a loop lol!