Sexing chicks on "How It's Made" TV show

[chickonaroost]

Yesterday, (tooooo hot to be outside), I was watching the show, "How It's Made" and they did a thing on hatchery chicks. It showed the poor babies dropping through conveyor belts and getting tossed onto racks-sad....but not to get off topic. They showed the people sexing the chicks. They picked them up by a wing and if their wing feathers had two distinct rows of feathers they were pullets. If they had a single row of wing feathers, they were roos. Did anyone else see it? Has anyone ever heard of this sexing method?, because it looked to be fairly easy to tell the difference.

 

[greyfields]

I have never heard of that method, so it's probably specific to only certain breeds. Most chickens are vent sexed, except for sex links. The real horror they didn't show you is what they do to all the excess male chicks. Google if only if you have a strong stomach and are braev.

 

[homecatmom]

I've seen it several times. They sure throw those babies around don't they? It looks easy to tell the difference, but if it was so accurate, why would we be getting roos when we didn't order them? I still think it must be an "educated guess" as to the sex.

 

[Buckguy20]

I saw Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe do a report on sexing chicks at McMurray. It has ran many times. I haven't the one on How things are made.
Monty

 

[cruelshoes]

I saw that show last week! It was interesting, but kind of sad. I kept expecting one of the chicks to spin off of that conveyor belt thingie.

I also saw the "How it's Made" episode on eggs. It was basically a feature on factory farms and how they work. They had these white chickens (Leghorns?) in cages packed on top of each other with no room to move around. Their combs were HUGE and kind of a sickish pink. I saw them and thought "those chickens don't look well at all." Funny, because only a few months ago, I probably whouldn't have thought much at all about how the chickens' combs looked.

 

[silkiechicken]

Looking at the feathers to determine sex is feather sexing. It is done by mating a fast feathering male with a slow feathering female. The boys will have equal length feathers while the females will have two rows.

 

[Wolfpacker]

We watched "The Natural History of the Chicken" on Netflix and they showed a few scenes of commercial chicken houses. My wife immediatlely said we would NEVER buy any products other than from free-range chickens again.