Wheaten ameraucana 2 week cockerel

[MysteryChicken]

Yes, the chick is a cockerel. Wheaten is fairly easy to sex early.

 

[jjjennejjj]

Pretty birds! Is this your first hatch from

Yes, the chick is a cockerel. Wheaten is fairly easy to sex early.

That's what I thought too. I am historically pretty good at determining gender, I have 13 different breeds. Wyandottes & orpingtons take me at least 6 weeks and even then I wait much longer. I'm just not good at acting on it. I'm trying to be more practical and cull them early. I always end up keeping them way too long.

 

[AinaWGSD]

I'd hold off on judging male vs female until the breast feathers start coming in. Off colored chicks happen, this winter I hatched eggs from a mixed flock of buckeyes (black tailed red) and malines (black barred) and somehow ended up with 8 chicks that seem to be silver. Unless you've been breeding these birds for a few years and have been getting consistent results I wouldn't be quick to rule out a dark/sooty off colored pullet.

 

[debid]

^This is how I feel. I understand wanting to know as early as possible but waiting for first chest feathers doesn't seem like a long time to me.

 

[jjjennejjj]

I have had around 6 dozen wheaten ameraucana chicks since 2023. I have another 30 wheaten ameraucana eggs in 5 different incubators, and a dedicated breeding group, so its not like I won't get any pullets this month. And I love roosters; I have 15-they are the reason I have such a ridiculously large flock.

I just finally finished building 11 separate coops to house the breeds that I would like to work on as a hobby. I had planned to try and vent sex and then grow out this spring to test my accuracy, but gave up after the first one because I was too scared to squish it enough to expose the cloaca: all I did was squirt poop.

So now I will have more than 200 chicks this season and only room to grow out about 100, so culling early will be essential. I have staggered my hatches weekly, so that I can assess them until 8 weeks depending on the breed.

Wheatens I had planned to wait until 4 weeks, but this one seems so easy to sex at 2 weeks. I had read that high quality wheaten females sometimes have dark streaks on their backs, which this one has...but those dark shoulders and barely noticeable 3 rows on comb scream male.

I know culling is half of breeding, it's just hard. They are so adorable. It's a lot easier when I am protecting my hens and chosen roosters and sexually mature cockerels from each other.

 

[AinaWGSD]

That's a tough spot to be in. If your main concern is limited space and you're leaning male then I would probably go ahead and cull. You may be wrong but that 10% vent sexing error goes both ways, sometimes a fry pan special ends up with an accidental pullet.