sexing day old chicks

[chickenmamatoo]

I am sure this question has been asked many times......can I sex my chicks?

I crossed a Bard Rock with a Bard rocks and a Bard rock with Austrolorps....do either of those species of bird have any sex linked traits that you know of?

 

[urbanagrarian]

You can sex the pure Barred Rocks by size of the head spot in the chicks.

"The males and females hatch with white spots on top of their heads with the male spot being larger and less sharply defined. Also, the females tend to have darker shanks because the B gene is an efficient inhibitor of shank color. These two traits, based on the B gene dose effect, allow sexing of day-old chicks with a high accuracy rate." quoted from the site
http://marsa_sellers.tripod.com/geneticspages/page2.html

On the Australorp cross which is the hen and which is the rooster?

 

[chickenmamatoo]

The rooster is the the Bard Rock......we borrowed him...pure bred. He bred with bard rocks, austrloprs and rhode island reds.

I am going to inspect the chicks for size and definition of their head spots......most of them have a head spot a few do not.

They all are black , one has 2 brown stripes ( i am guessing that is a RIR mix) and a brown splash on it's cheek.

We are hoping to make a genteics science fair project out of this experience...but we have no way of telling who is who now because they all look so similiar. I guess we can just look at the Bard rock traits because we are sure of who the father is.

Any suggestions?

 

[urbanagrarian]

I don't think you will be able to sex the chicks but I think a Science Fair project hypothesis having to do with barring might work.

You could look at the gene for barring which is dominant and sex linked. Your hypothesis could be either that the rooster is heterozygous or homozygous for the barring trait and look at whether all the chicks are barred or not to support/disprove the hypothesis.

You might want to post this in the Breeds in General topic. I think it might get response from folks interested or knowledgeable in genetics there who might have suggestions.

Also what are the age(s) of the science fair participants. This might affect the project? I've explained dominant sex-linked genetic traits to a 10 year old girl scout troop and they got it, but I'm not sure kids too much younger would understand the concept.

 

[chickenmamatoo]

My daughter is 11. We are homeschoolers and have been studying genetics this semester. She has grasped a good deal of the concepts already. Wetalked about it this morning and she came up with a hypothesis.......of ...........If barring is a dominant trait then we should be able to look at the offspring and predict what percentage of the hatch should express this trait.

I think she is on the right track.....what do you think?

I will post in the breeds section later about this thanks for the suggestion.

 

[urbanagrarian]

I think she is on the right track. It sounds like a great homeschooling project .

She will need to take into account that the rooster could have either one or two genes for barring. The fact that some of the hens are barred may complicate things a bit, but that only makes it more interesting.

She could also try to determine who is the mother of specific chicks.

The following link is a chicken genetics forum and may have folks who could also help her out with any genetics questions.
http://www.the-coop.org/cgi-bin/UBB/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum;f=3


The 10 year old Girl Scouts I'm working with have a naked neck neck buff colored rooster and a Rhode Island Red rooster penned with 12 barred rock hens.

They should get barred roosters and hens that are not barred. They will also observe how many chicks have the naked neck trait and predict which rooster is fathering more chicks. I think it takes a week or so for the bars to start showing up in chicks because barring will show up as they get their new wing feathers

Good luck.