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

 

[DemeterAD9]

All comes down to genetics. I’m guessing these are mutts? You simply cannot know one way or another if the birds in question have a hodgepodge mix of genes from various breeds. Full siblings can look completely different too, color, comb and all. I’m personally not convinced your black chick is a male, at that age it could very well be female still. Some birds mature faster than others so it’s easy to be convinced a cockerel is actually a pullet and vise versa. Of course the chance of being right/wrong is always 50%!

While I have noticed males with pea and even rose combs tend to develop color in their combs early I would not say you can tell right from hatch based on comb size. The three ridges thing can simply be how their pea comb is. I have a couple brahma x blue copper marans with 3 ridges and they are female. For the longest time I did think one was a male though. Pea combs come in a variety of shapes and sizes due to whatever genes are in play.

Take this OE X blue copper maran for example. I had suspected it was a male for a good long while due to its comb coloring up as early as 8 weeks. It also had a very upright stance more often than not. Of course this is all disregarding the more female specific (I believe anyways) breast feather patterning.

Then there’s these EE X BJG crosses (the 2 blue chicks with pea combs) who were obvious males by 4 weeks old.

 

[NatJ]

View attachment 4314535
View attachment 4314536

View attachment 4314537

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.

View attachment 4314539

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:


View attachment 4314541

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

Here he is a little older:

View attachment 4314542

What a stance. No doubt he’s a boy.

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

View attachment 4314543

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

I'll be curious to see a follow-up when they get older.

If the combs were not accurate for predicting the sex, that will be good to know.
If the combs were right, we don't know if it will apply to anyone else's chickens, but it will certainly be convenient for you to know for the ones you raise! And it would be a good reason for other people to pay attention and see whether it will work for their flock too.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If it were that consistent I'd think hatcheries would be using it on their pea combed chicks. Vent sexing gets you a 90% guarantee, you'd think they'd use something different if it were more accurate. I have seen posts on here where people say it is accurate but I've seen posts on other methods that I know are not. I don't know if this method is accurate or not but tracking the results could be really interesting.

There are a couple of gene pairs that determine if the comb will be pea, rose, single, or cushion. That is pretty straightforward. But there are several other "modifiers" that affect appearance. Some single combs are big, some small. Some are erect while others may flop. Some may have 7 points, some 5. And on and on. I could easily envision these modifiers could affect the appearance of a chick's comb (pea, rose, single, or cushion) at or shortly after hatch.

 

[calichooks]

All comes down to genetics. I’m guessing these are mutts? You simply cannot know one way or another if the birds in question have a hodgepodge mix of genes from various breeds. Full siblings can look completely different too, color, comb and all. I’m personally not convinced your black chick is a male, at that age it could very well be female still. Some birds mature faster than others so it’s easy to be convinced a cockerel is actually a pullet and vise versa. Of course the chance of being right/wrong is always 50%!

While I have noticed males with pea and even rose combs tend to develop color in their combs early I would not say you can tell right from hatch based on comb size. The three ridges thing can simply be how their pea comb is. I have a couple brahma x blue copper marans with 3 ridges and they are female. For the longest time I did think one was a male though. Pea combs come in a variety of shapes and sizes due to whatever genes are in play.

Take this OE X blue copper maran for example. I had suspected it was a male for a good long while due to its comb coloring up as early as 8 weeks. It also had a very upright stance more often than not. Of course this is all disregarding the more female specific (I believe anyways) breast feather patterning.
View attachment 4314726View attachment 4314723

Then there’s these EE X BJG crosses (the 2 blue chicks with pea combs) who were obvious males by 4 weeks old.
View attachment 4314725

I love this! Thank you for your insight and examples!

While trying to Google about obvious/visible combs at hatch, someone on a forum claimed that all their chicks that hatched with immediate big combs ended up males! So hopefully when this thread is finished, people Googling similar will be able to have all this info.

It’s good to hear three ridges doesn’t immediately mean male, like I previously believed. Might have to relook at some things And you’re right, I’m wondering if the black pea combed chick might’ve just smashed my hypothesis!

 

[calichooks]

If it were that consistent I'd think hatcheries would be using it on their pea combed chicks. Vent sexing gets you a 90% guarantee, you'd think they'd use something different if it were more accurate. I have seen posts on here where people say it is accurate but I've seen posts on other methods that I know are not. I don't know if this method is accurate or not but tracking the results could be really interesting.

There are a couple of gene pairs that determine if the comb will be pea, rose, single, or cushion. That is pretty straightforward. But there are several other "modifiers" that affect appearance. Some single combs are big, some small. Some are erect while others may flop. Some may have 7 points, some 5. And on and on. I could easily envision these modifiers could affect the appearance of a chick's comb (pea, rose, single, or cushion) at or shortly after hatch.

Totally! Thanks for the info on comb development, it’s true that these little guys are total mutts so they got a lot going on genetically! They all have pea-combed EE mothers and a Salmon Faverolle father. Hopefully in the coming weeks I’ll have some more data to confirm if my hypothesis is true or not! But you’re totally right about how the hatcheries would be using that method instead, I didn’t think about that lol

 

[calichooks]

Okay so, in evidence against my own hypothesis…

Here is a photo of a pea-combed chick from my first hatch, exactly 3 weeks old.

Scooter, my handsome little devil. He ended up being a proper EE rooster.

Now we can compare that to Yukako, my current 3 week old EE x Faverolle:

It’s definitely too early to tell. But I guess I noticed my two obvious boys never sparred with this one, and it’s a lot more independent.

More updates to come and I’ll have more on the babies from the first images too.

 

[SourRoses]

Nope. Up till recently I thought 2 of my 4 month old growouts were cockerels. Broader based pea combs, more pink tinge.
At 5 months they decided to lay eggs.
And this is with a couple years breeding the same line and raising at least a hundred (or more) each year.
Now I can just doubt myself completely, forever, lol!