Newbie needing help with breed and gender.

[Zerinala]

Hi, I'm very new to this chicken keeping thing. My husband and I thought it'd be nice to have fresh eggs so we headed down to the local market to get a couple of POL chickens to start us off. Unfortunatly we took our kids and ended up coming home with 7 little yellow fluffball chickens. We have cared for and raised them for a bit but I now want to see if I can ID the breed and sex of them. I really don't want the kids to get too attached to them if they are all male as we are not allowed roosters in our area. Can anyone help us? They would be around 5 weeks old. Is it too soon to tell?

We have temporarily named them after their tag colour until we know their sexes.


This is Black


This is Blue


This is green


This one is Purple


This is Red


This is White


And this is Yellow

Thankyou in advance for any help.

 

[Veer67]

Sorry but they all look like roosters. They look like red sex link mixes or second generation red sex links, Purple could be a Production Red. http://voices.yahoo.com/sex-link-chicken-genetics-5572393.html?cat=58

 

[Kelsie2290]

They are five weeks old? I am seeing a lot of roosters. They really all look like roosters to me, they just have a lot of pink comb and wattle for their age. Green maybe a slight chance not if older than you think.

 

[Zerinala]

I was afraid of that. Have been told by local feed store that the bloke at the market CAN sex the chickens but says he can't and sells off the little roosters cheap to get rid of them. His POL chickens are advertised as ISA BROWNS and when I questioned him on the chicks he said they were ISA BROWNS or WHITE SOMETHINGS, LOL. He also told me he couldn't sex them. Dunno what I'm gonna do with them all.....

 

[Veer67]

I was afraid of that. Have been told by local feed store that the bloke at the market CAN sex the chickens but says he can't and sells off the little roosters cheap to get rid of them. His POL chickens are advertised as ISA BROWNS and when I questioned him on the chicks he said they were ISA BROWNS or WHITE SOMETHINGS, LOL. He also told me he couldn't sex them. Dunno what I'm gonna do with them all.....

Isa Browns are a kind of sex link, http://www.backyardpoultrymag.com/8-1/what-breed-is-it-understanding-sex-link-chickens/

 

[donrae]

Those are all roosters, sorry. See if he'll take them back.

Isa browns are sex link, the hens are one color and the roosters are another. the kicker is, that only works the first time you make the cross. When you breed an Isa brown to another bird, you lose the sex linkage and get red and white birds of both genders.

I know chicks are cute, but it sounds like you had a better plan the first time. Stay strong with that next time! And, if anything seems off, feel free to take pictures of the birds and post them here before you buy them. There's usually enough of us hanging around at any given time to give you a pretty quick answer.

 

[Zerinala]

Thankyou for all your help.

 

[Zerinala]

I also got this 16 week old from him a week ago. he says its a female. Can you help me confirm?

 

[Chrysolinsbirds]

Black and green are the only two that might be pullets.. As for the older one looks very roosterish to m, notice the tail feathers and bright red comb and waddle, also looks low he has colorful neck ruffle feathers.. If u can trust your feed store guy you might need to find a friendlier more helpful feedstore. Good luck I hope you enjoy your chicken experience as much as we do =)

 

[Chrysolinsbirds]

Sorry about my autocorrects... I'm no expert tho, I couldn't even tell u what type of chickens you've got.. Can't wait to see what someone who really knows what they are talking about responds =)