You can eat any chicken and the last batch of mixed chickens I hatched out from my own flock proved once again that down has almost no relation to feather color. I had 6 totally yellow chicks. One feathered in black, 2 feathered in mostly white with brown speckles on wing tips and 2 are feathering in orange, and one is feathering in tan colored. But they all started yellow...and wing feather seeing only works on some breeds. Sometimes I notice that males seem to feather slower, as in my females will all have tails and the males will still just have tail fluff. But even that doesn't always work out. So I wait to see who ends up with a red comb I certainly the birds are totally feathered. That trick has never let me down. Peach comb, girl, orange comb, girl, washed out pink comb, girl...Red comb--boy. But sometimes even the boys are e's low to redden in. But if you notice when they feather some of the chick's are super pretty with awesome colors and patterns those are usually your boys. Hens are almost always more drab than their male counterparts. I had an EE this season that tried to fool me. His size was all boy, his beauty screamed boy, but 3 other boys had already outted themselves by way of comb, but this guy was still all orange and lady like. A full week after the others showed male he finally did. I kept saying I knew he was too pretty to be a girl and I was right.
And the last one i was assisting to hatch has just broke out of her egg and is now resting on the other side of the incubator!! I'm so happy about that, hopefully it's going to be OK! And i hope it's a female!! It's yellow too, with some black specs - all of them are a combination of yellow, black and brown. The ones with the black spots i think are male which i am disappointed about because they have the most interesting coloring. I want to get a mixture of different colored chickens so they look nice as well as providing eggs. Can you eat the males? Do they get meat on them? These are all chickens for egg production.
