Sexing Pea Combs at Hatch?

[calichooks]

Here’s a phenomenon I’d recently wondered about as I’ve hatched chicks:

Are males obvious from hatch sometimes? I know there’s a sentiment “you’ll never truly know until they crow or lay an egg”, but I fear it’s cracking up to possibly be a lot simpler than that! Maybe.

This is the mom of the chick in the first photo, at a few hours old herself. Note between the photos that she has a bare patch, as does her chick, except her chick is the only one with a visible comb. Its mother didn’t have much of a comb, if at all.

I also have a hatch about three weeks older: all cockerels. The one pea-combed chick hatched with the exact same visible comb, and matured into a young male.

Below is a photo of that hatch at the same exact hours-old age:

Note the same exact trend: obvious projection, wide comb, obvious three wide.

Here he is a little older:

What a stance. No doubt he’s a boy.

For one more piece of evidence, here are some older examples:

These are two pea-combed chicks from my first hatch. The top example ended up a male. The bottom example ended up a female. Both are around ~3 wks here. Note the pinkish tone, the obvious projection, the three ridges on the male. Note the yellow-tone, single ridge, flat comb of the female.

Was wondering if anybody else had anything to throw into this