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kimalulu said:
I was wondering if some one could explain to me...In auto sexing breeds of chickens, do the females usually have chipmunk stripes and the males have a white dot on or behind their head? I'm mostly interested in bielefelders but was wondering about CCL as well. How do you tell the difference from the males and females in sex link breeds? Thanks for the info!
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Kima:

CCLs go something like this: males will have a white dot on their head....although auto sexing the white dot is often not pronounced, sometimes some breeders say well defined chipmunk pattern is female and not well defined is male...I think the other autosexing birds are somewhat similar....my two cents....
 
kimalulu said:
I was wondering if some one could explain to me...In auto sexing breeds of chickens, do the females usually have chipmunk stripes and the males have a white dot on or behind their head? I'm mostly interested in bielefelders but was wondering about CCL as well. How do you tell the difference from the males and females in sex link breeds? Thanks for the info!
Click to expand...
All of the breeds referred to as autosexing have a particular set of genes that affect the color of the chick down. This is closely related to the chick down in black sexlinks, in that they both make use of the sex-linked barring gene. In black sexlinks, only the mother can be barred, and so only male offspring get the barring gene. That results in a small white head spot when hatched. Autosexing relies in the males having 2 copies of the barring gene, that gene is unique in that not only is it sex-linked,but it is only partially dominant (or an incomplete dominant), meaning 2 copies result in twice as much white as a single copy. You can see this in black barred breeds (Barred Rocks, Dominiques, Cuckoo Marans, California Greys, etc) as males that are much lighter in color and this is evident very early on, but not always at hatch.

Autosexing results in an adult bird color called "Crele", but not every Crele colored chick is easy to sex, there are other genes that can adversely affect the clarity of the colors. I have 4 autosexing breeds, the easiest to sex are the Rhodebars and Welbars, the Biels are pretty easy also, but some of the CCL's can be tricky to the untrained eye. I've heard some strains of Rhodebar are harder to sex also. Being so new, these breeds have not had much culling to eliminate the hard to sex genetics, but that is changing rapidly. I have saved back a few select CCL's for next year, all chicks with the classic chipmunk stripes. I will let your know it about 6 months or so if they produce 100% easily sexable chicks. The "theory" is that they will in which case all breeders will select for that and sell the culls, making future chicks all as sexable as my Welbars and Rhodebars.

All of this ambiguity is only true for newly hatched chicks. If you wait 4 or 5 days and check the primary feathers, every CCL (and all crele breed) is 100% sexable to the untrained eye, and they remain that way for life. Since I prefer to sell chicks past their fragile first few days, it is a moot point for me. Plus, I can now sex even the most ambiguous CCL's at hatch and never get it wrong. I doubted myself for a while, but checking the primaries proved my judgement correct and now I don't doubt my ability to sex them.

(wow, sorry I got kind of carried away with this)
 
252 chicks (and poults) hatched over the weekend!
I moved some of the older chicks out to tractors on grass. Nothing looks more contented that a young chicken stretched out in the grass, casually pecking at bits of greenery. If they could talk I imagine them saying "Ahhhh, this is the life!"
 
dheltzel said:
252 chicks (and poults) hatched over the weekend!
I moved some of the older chicks out to tractors on grass. Nothing looks more contented that a young chicken stretched out in the grass, casually pecking at bits of greenery. If they could talk I imagine them saying "Ahhhh, this is the life!"
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The weather is so good, I bet the chicks love to run around outside. I feel guilty that we haven't finished the chicken run yet. DH will dig around the chainlink fence and put hardware cloth around it and underground this week. Their run is about 40'x12'.

Is it normal that the chicks eat less after they move to the coop? They only eat about 1/3 less fermented feed than before and even loss interesting to their favorite treats (meal worms, apple, etc.). Some chicks are sneezing. I have VetRx. I'm not sure if I need to give them some?
 
When it comes to fermented feed, if they just began it then it is normal for them to reduce their intake once they get used to it. I didn't say that right, but the point still the same. When you begin fermented feed, they eat a lot. Once they've been on it for a week or so, they settle on a smaller amount.
If you just moved them, they are probably sneezing from the dust settling from the bedding.
 
MotorcycleChick said:
When it comes to fermented feed, if they just began it then it is normal for them to reduce their intake once they get used to it. I didn't say that right, but the point still the same. When you begin fermented feed, they eat a lot. Once they've been on it for a week or so, they settle on a smaller amount.
If you just moved them, they are probably sneezing from the dust settling from the bedding.
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Thank you. They have had fermented feed for more than 2 weeks before they move and never had anything left on the evenings. I moved them on last Tuesday. Then there are always about 1/3 feed left everyday. Everybody seems active and happy, but they loss appetize. Not only less fermented feed, but also not begging for their favorite treats any more. I usually give them a handful meal worms or other treats twice a day. I couldn't believe that they even didn't finish the meal worms some time.
 

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