What the heck....male/female?

[pinkstons]

So I went to the feed store five weeks ago and this is what I picked up, the fluffy version of these cuties, and the sweetheart-I call her that because of the HUGE smile ear to ear she gave me as she said this...says I am 99.99999% SURE these are ALL FEMALE... oh no ma'am, we dont have roosters here!. Okay with that, I picked up my "girls" and ventured home to raise my first flock....well, imagine my surprise when I see this....


See that big dark pink blob under the beak...yeah well, the REST of them do NOT have that...so is this a female growing up faster than the rest or is this a rooster in the making...these are RIR 's...Of course now I am excited as a new mommy getting twins...I am one of those too as I have a set of those...but any way, this-raising chickens-is my new love as I now have twin teenage boys...I dont know if I like them as much as I used to anymore...so I will focus on the birdies...

...
Okay but so look at the other chicks in the flock...no red junk under the chin...are we gender confused or WHAT??? This is something to definitely watch over a cup of coffee...


Okay so this is what the other girls look like, the "dude" or whatever we are referring to him as, well actually, now that we talk about it, his given name is Sir White Chocolate...(Coco), because my seven year old bubba decided he had dark and white chocolate on him...I think I know what he wanted for dessert that night.
Obviously, all of you can see my dilema and confusion...so is this Gender Identification 101 in chick raising that every new flock "mommy" has to go through? For sure, this chick is scratchin her head....help please...

Now, for my other issue...well, you will all soon see that I have more issues than Time magazine....but that smiling chicklette at the feed store, while she smiled so BIG...assured me that I was purchasing RIR's and Barred Plymouth Rocks....ONLY...here we go again, that 99.99999% SURE...uh huh...sure...I will NEVER fall for that one AGAIN! Unless of course she was right and I am just not identifying these chicks right...so below in photo 1 is what came home...what IS that!!! Obviously a chicken, (That is what the Man said when I brought this GARGANTUAN concern to his attention!) But is it a BPR??? The one is in the backdrop hiding from the camera like she is a rockstar is, yay me, I got one right...but the one eating????


Here is another...see my confusion???
Not that it really matters, but in the end, I want to do this RIGHT, and know my birds. With six kids asking TONS, and I mean, an endless stream of TONS of questions, well actually the same question repeated six times over generally in a different fashion...I would like to be able to SHUT THEM UP and answer them!

.... yes I love my children...really, I do...I also find tons of humor in them...it is the best !

Okay, so answer away, and let me know what the heck I have here.....for now I am off to the hardware store to pick up coop supplies and out to the coop to fix it up....yay me!

Happy weekend all! Sam

 

[goldies99]

i am not an expert..i went through 14 roos's to get 10 hens!...but the RIR looks like a roo to me!....what are the tail feathers like??..are they pointy or round??..pointy is a roo!....the black one doesnt look like a roo yet...but i dont think its a barred rock.....maybe an easter egger....maybe just a girl chicken!

 

[fshrchik]

So, your unknown mostly black hen? I am 99% sure she's a black sex link (AKA black star). I have 3 and they look just like that.

 

[dretd]

Your RIR most certainly is not girly, I'm 99.9999% sure. And the black one looks like a Black Sex Link, I'm 99.9999% sure

Just FYI, the sexed pullets they get in are vent sexed at the hatchery. There are a small number--about 10% of the chicks--who little bitty parts in the vent at 1 day old don't look either male or female so the sexer makes an educated guess. Sometimes they get it right or sometimes, like in Sir White Chocolate, guess wrong. Generally hatcheries guarantee vent sexed chicks at 95% accurate (I'm guessing that 50% of the time they guess wrong).

As for the other one. I am guessing a mix-up in the bins at the feed store. Happens a lot. A Black Sex Link is a mix between a barred female and an unbarred male so the male chicks look like a barred baby: black with a white spot on top of the head, and the females are unbarred and are usually a solid black. Now one would expect a male sex link to easily get mixed in with the BR bin, but maybe the female had a hint of grey on the top of the head and someone thought they belonged with the BR chicks. You could call the feed store and ask them what other breeds of chicks they got in the same order as the Barred Rock order so see what might be mixed in.

If you don't want to Roo, you could also talk to the feed store. One of my local feed stores takes in the roos sold as pullets and leaves them in a cage for folks to re-home. Hatcheries generally refund the difference in price between the pullet and roo if they are mis-sexed so its usually only a buck or so, not generally worth the hassle to get money back.

 

[Scooter&Suzie]

The Rhode Island Red really looks like a cockerel.

 

[dretd]

Oh, and I totally, forgot to add:

 

[nurse_turtle]

The RIR is a rooster and the black ones with brown around the neck and chest are Black sex-links and are female.

 

[pinkstons]

Okay, so get this. I totally take the blame for this...I have welded wire that is 6 feet tall and a few yards long...I used it as a portable run for the hens to play out on the grass. So I did note that there were some sharp edges on the fence, and meant to get to cutting them back. When the girls were in the run, they were pretty much away from the area....uggggh I feel so bad. Apparently one of the girls got snagged. But get this, this happened last weekend....my daughter noticed the wound today. It is on her back, at her tail on the side, and is HIDEOUS! I was floored! Totally upset. It is healed over and she does not appear to be picked on, lethargic-although with this i would have thought she would have been DEAD...and there is nothing different in her personality...she loves to be held..and still jumps right up. So this little girls name was Turtle, but I think I am changing it to Phoenix...she is a tough one! But after you see the photos below, what do you think I should do at this point...this is comparable to bringing up my horse and noticing a wound that happened days ago, it sucks, and is ugly, but is healing and dry...no oooze, no puss, no apparent infection. And with this girl, the skin around it is normal color, not red or irritated...and there is no inflammation or such. So I dont want to mess with it...I tend to want to let her do her own thing with this....The girl is a champ though...and yes, I have fixed the fence and this will NEVER happen again...I am ashamed to even tell anyone that this happened...but I am coughing it up to beginning learning, and Chicks 101... still, sad though...

I am crossing my fingers and toes that she will get better and get through this....so far so good.

In this photo it almost looks wet but the dark part is completely dry...

Uggg these are so sad!!!

okay, so please, any suggestions, thoughts...???

 

[Panth]

You would honestly be surprised at what kind of wounds chickens can not only live through, but don't even seem bothered by. As long as they stay clean and don't get infected, they heal very very quickly. I have one hen that was caught by the neighbors dog and had her whole back laid wide open, you could see right down to the muscle and she was up running around the next day like it never happened. Now that the feathers have grown back, I can't even tell which hen she is.

 

[dretd]

okay, so please, any suggestions, thoughts...???

IN general with wounds I recommend less is more. The biggest danger is having the other chicken picking at the bloody/torn area and flies laying eggs on it in the summer (deep bite wounds are different because they introduce bacteria in the body). If you see this sort of thing in the future, I would keep a close eye on the hen and pull her to a hospital pen if the other hens peck at the wound. When its time to re-integrate, I alway pull out one or two of the hens for a few days becasue it upsets the pecking order and the recovering re-addition will have an easier time of it.