New to Chicken Farming and New to this site!!

[Double_H]

Hello Everyone!! Im new to this site and pretty new to Chicken Farming.. My 10yr old daughter talked me into it.. its all been going great except I DO NOT know how to sex my chicks!! Im so scared and I dont know how Im going to tell them apart!! We have 45 chicks from 72hrs old to 2 1/2 weeks.. Can anyone help me with this???!!!

 

[Dingleberry]

45 chicks???? check a video on you tube about sexing them. A picture is worth a thousand words. There are many methods for sexing. Vent, feathers, string and pencil... just to name a few. Can you take some back if you have too many roo's

 

[Qi Chicken]

 

[CoffeeCow]

Welcome!

Wow, 45. Thats a lot for a first timer, but I bet they are all cute

Got any pics?
If you got a straight run, I hope you have a place to sell/take/give away/freeze all the cockerels... 20-25 cockerels would be bad.
Its hard to sex them that young with any degree of accuracy. and vent sexing really only works on hatchings, and can be a bit dangerous... so leave that one to the pros.
About the only way you are gonna get an accurate sexing is to wait till they grow up a bit. Then look for the spurs, combs, etc..

I have 9 chicks (3 weeks old today), I am fairly sure that one of the white EE's is a roo, If you look at all my others, they are feathering out pretty evenly, but the suspected roo isn't. His feathers are not as fully developed as the ladies, but he is the same size (if not a bit larger) he looks a bit "scruffy" so I have named him just that, Scruffy hehe

Also, if you look at his beak, along the ridge, you can see some bumps forming. I assume that this is the start of his comb.

This is my first time with chicks, I may be totally wrong here, But I have read a lot, and "Scruffy" is showing a lot of the signs that everyone says mean roo.

Hope this helped you a bit, and good luck with your flock, I am sure you will have an much fun as I am

 

[k7ailaan]

Quote:
I could not agree more

and Welcome !

 

[chick4chicks]

Wow 45 chicks that is wild. I would just wait til they are a little older to see what sex you have. Good luck and hoping you have a lot of pullets.

 

[WV_Hillbilly70]

Wow!!!! 45 chicks!! I was overwhelmed with my first 11.....good luck!! It gets easier. Hope you got the coop started 'cause they grow FAST!! I found that out the hard way....

and welcome to BYC, all the information a new chicken rancher could ever want is right here.....

 

[gryeyes]

In addition to spending tons of time just WATCHING your chicks, expect to visit BYC regularly for more information and assistance. I would have been totally lost without BYC members, and I only started with 8 chicks back in October 2009. Now I'm up to 22, but only 9 are full grown, with 1 rooster and 8 layers. All the rest are younger in 3 separate batches - I think I'll have 5 more layers within a month or so, though.

If you bought all those chicks as "straight run" instead of from bins of "hens" then you are gonna have a whole slew of roosters.

But if you bought some for home cookin' purposes, about the time you figure out which ones are roosters FOR SURE, those roos will be ready to process.

You are one brave person to start out with so many all at once!! I'm impressed!

 

[organicchef]