Silver Laced Wyandotte hen or roo?

[cacklemama]

They are 16 weeks old.

Lana pink

Callie purple

Allie blue

 

[Chicken Boy 101]

Hens. I have 3 silver laced Wyandotte hens.

 

[chuckachucka]

All pullets.

 

[sylviethecochin]

At 16 weeks, I see all pullets. Though purple has a little more wattle development than I'm comfortable with, if she were a rooster, I believe she'd be showing silver by this point.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

It's the lack of sickle feathers that makes this confusing. The wing blotches totally say male on the one.

But comb and waddle development do indicate female. I have a feeling these are non conforming to standard birds. Which is absolutely exciting for me, because I just love to see something new everyday... especially when it comes to chickens!

Did you get them sexed or straight run? From hatchery or breeder?

 

[EggSighted4Life]

So far my saying goes...

The ONLY 2 things I know to be absolute about chickens is that hens don't grow POINTED saddle feathers and roosters don't lay eggs.

Beyond that everything seems negotiable as far as I can tell.

 

[cacklemama]

It's the lack of sickle feathers that makes this confusing. The wing blotches totally say male on the one.

But comb and waddle development do indicate female. I have a feeling these are non conforming to standard birds. Which is absolutely exciting for me, because I just love to see something new everyday... especially when it comes to chickens!

Did you get them sexed or straight run? From hatchery or breeder?

Sexed female from Cackle Hacthery

 

[Mark Cavalli]

Why guess by the way they look I think you have all girls I hope that is what you are hoping for. Again kinda hard to tell on the one but I think they're all girls.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

Sexed female from Cackle Hacthery

I thought it might be cackle from your use name.

The 10% accuracy of sexing by hatcheries has been on par with my actual reality from them. That is my overall rating though. I did get 2 SLW in a batch all their own that ended up being boys. So that was 100% error rating. But confirmation that small sample sizes can definitely skew results. It was VERY obvious by 8 weeks that they were male. Maybe even before that, but that was the point at which there could no longer be any denial.

They do look VERY much like non conforming LADIES! Hatcheries very often even put out straight comb Wyandotte (I thought mine was the prettiest) since breeding all rose comb is said to be breeding out your fertility. But aside from that (from contracted hatchery breeders), they really focus to be representative of the breeds more than conforming to the standard of perfection. Their intention is quantity not quality (SOP). This would explain some of my confusion, at 16 weeks I agree there *should* be MORE male indicators. Not saying at all that your birds aren't quality! I have gotten plenty of good hatchery birds and even still have 3 in my flock who made pet status... past many, many, cuts to the flock.

Regardless of my responses to your other thread... Throwing lacing standard out the window, I will say they are throwing WAY more female indicators than not! I hope I see when you post your final results for real.

Cautiously optimistic! Thank you for letting me play along and learn stuff too.