I didn't bother with feather sexing because the speckled sussex weren't on the lists I found of breeds it worked for. My last hatch I knew by two weeks if I had roos or not (they were all roos). I know that the speckled sussex roos feather more slowly, so I'm pretty sure I've got one pullet. And she has delicate little legs. The other sussex chick has always been a little puny, but I have a feeling it's another roo.
If I go just by thick legs, I've got about 60-70% roos. If I go by tail feather growth, then I've got 50-60%. But they aren't the same. And some of the EE/OE don't have combs at all... like the polish chicks. So I guess that's from the comb type?
The yellow chicks have the longest tails and biggest combs, and thin legs. So, it's all just a hodge podge.
BUT this morning I threw some worms to the broody and her chicks. One yellow chick grabbed the worms, broke them into pieces, and passed the pieces to the other chicks. So that's either a roo, or a future good mom.
I did a little experiment with my youngests daughters Buff orps to see if they had that slow feathering gene. It would have been nice if they had, then we could use the different rates of feathering in to sex them. We had 2 distinctly different stages of feathering. Short tails and much slower feathering on about half of them. Banded each group and it turned out to be half of each sex in each group. So that is a no go on that particular line of Buffs.
