Sexing Help, Black Australorps

[UpstateSCChickens]

Recently added 2 Black Australorp Chicks: at 6 weeks I was absolutely certain they were cockerels. Can’t have boys in the city, so returned them to the farm. The owner exchanged them for 3 week old ‘pullets’.

I hate to hand raise the babes just to find out again that they’re not girls.
The guy who sold them to me said BAs are hard to sex and the best method he had was to look at the comb. Black for pullets, white for cockerels. Obviously this method is flawed!

Any advice for sexing them?

 

[Acre4Me]

You need to wait until their older to determine gender. But now you have pics to help guide you!

 

[Acre4Me]

Pics?

 

[Acre4Me]

Here are 5 week old BA we had. We specifically wanted a male and 3 females. Note that the females have some red on their comb bc the hatchery marked them so we could tell the BA apart from another breed, and my kid thought they needed to continue the trend. You can see definite comb difference though.

 

[UpstateSCChickens]

Since these are so young, they haven’t developed any telltale signs that I can see.

Any way of sexing them fairly reliably this early?

 

[Acre4Me]

Three and 4 week old. You can see that the male at 3 weeks has blue marker on comb. Although the 3 week combs are pretty similar in shape and size for both M and female, they start to look quite different in shape by 4 weeks. Wattle differences are more apparent at 4 weeks.

 

[Acre4Me]

Wattle development is always a good sign of a male. As you can see, at 4 weeks the wattle growth is apparent in the make, but not the females. The comb is just generally bigger on the males.

 

[Acre4Me]

Since these are so young, they haven’t developed any telltale signs that I can see.

Any way of sexing them fairly reliably this early?

these do not look like 3 week olds.

 

[Mamatomany123]

Since these are so young, they haven’t developed any telltale signs that I can see.

Any way of sexing them fairly reliably this early?

These are not 3 weeks old.

 

[UpstateSCChickens]

these do not look like 3 week olds.

Sorry, I meant quantity 3. One week old.