sex link question

[mammaducky1]

Went to see a friend whose chickens are about 4-5 months old. She was told they were gold sex link. I took one look and commented on the number of roosters. She says she bought them from a local store and she was told they were gold sex link and all female, (she lives in town and cannot have roosters).

I have always told the difference between birds with the comb and wattle size. Are sex link birds different?

She has a mix of birds with prominent combs and wattles. About five or six have extremely prominent combs and wattles, the rest less so.

She claims that none are crowing and she has started getting a few eggs. (but much fewer eggs per day than supposed number of hens).

She has the birds for the eggs and does not want to keep feeding roosters (as well as possibly getting in trouble with zoning in her city).

Any help appreciated.

 

[Fred's Hens]

No, all birds get combs and wattles, both males and females. The difference in a gold sex link is that the pullets are gold/brown/red while the cockerels are creamy white, with brown saddles, in most cases. Cockerels sprout their combs and wattles at an early age.

The combs and wattles alone is not a male/female thing at that age. At 15 weeks, the sexlink pullets sprout them and begin to lay soon after. I suspect the ones that had the larger combs and wattles are the ones that are in lay.

Here's a photo, taken at about 7 weeks.

 

[catdaddyfro]

Went to see a friend whose chickens are about 4-5 months old. She was told they were gold sex link. I took one look and commented on the number of roosters. She says she bought them from a local store and she was told they were gold sex link and all female, (she lives in town and cannot have roosters).

I have always told the difference between birds with the comb and wattle size. Are sex link birds different?

She has a mix of birds with prominent combs and wattles. About five or six have extremely prominent combs and wattles, the rest less so.

She claims that none are crowing and she has started getting a few eggs. (but much fewer eggs per day than supposed number of hens).

She has the birds for the eggs and does not want to keep feeding roosters (as well as possibly getting in trouble with zoning in her city).

Any help appreciated.

If they aren't already crowing or at least one of them (if there are quite a few males in the group) I'd say they are most probly pullets. Production/hatchery type cockerels more than likely would already be crowing by that age as they mature fairly quickly and if they are the same age as the ones starting to lay they should have already been very (active) for lack of a better censored word and doing the rooster thing(mating) somewhat frequently. If they are all red/gold/buff they should be pullets the GSL males should feather out mostly white with red leakage in about a third or less of the body plumage. Too, some of those sex-links /production type pullets can develop extremely prominent combs as they have a lot of Leghorn genes in their background/genetic make-up.

Jeff

Fred you were posting as I was typing/editing up my report, I'm slower than molasses on a glacier in my typing. LOL