When can you tell brown from pearl?

[jcatblum]

Bottom is a brown mail order keet. Other is 4 day old pearl I hatched. I am starting to see that the brown is lighter but I wouldn't be able to tell if I didn't have a pearl to compare it with.

When is it obvious that the keet is brown & not a pearl?

 

[PeepsCA]

In that pic, they both look like Pearl Greys to me...

. There should be a much more noticeable color shade difference, especially in the dark stripes. Maybe it's just the pic tho.

As they start getting a lot of feathers at around 5-7 days old, the color of the new feather growth will be more obvious.

I'll go look in my brooders and see if I have a Brown and a Pearl Grey keet that are close in age to get a pic of for comparison for ya...

Figures, I have no Browns that are close to the age of your keets, but here ya go, check these 2 out:
(These keets are almost 2 weeks old. I'm fairly certain the Brown is a Hen, the males feather out lighter).

I just found a pic of a mixed batch of 2-3 day old keets that I hatched last yr, the Browns are labled... These 2 Browns turned out to be Hens and are part of one of my breeding flocks this year. You can see a really clear color difference between the 2 Browns and all the Pearl Grey keets in the brooder, even at this age.

Found another pic for comparison (I posted this last week I think... might be the same 2 keets as in the top pic)... lol

 

[jcatblum]

It is a bad pic, I usually use my iphone for pictures & my internet, since it is the only option out where I live.

I just started being able to tell the brown was lighter yesterday. I honestly thought they mailed out pearl at first! I will give them a little more time to feather in, right now the browns are 5 days old I think.

 

[PeepsCA]

Maybe the breeder of your keets breeds a darker shade of Brown than I do... lol but my Brown keets come from 2 different unrelated gene pools and the keets all look very similar, unless it's the male/female difference

 

[jcatblum]

Now I can tell the 2 colors apart. Guess I will just have to wait until they are 2 wks old with these browns.

 

[PeepsCA]

Great pic! It's sometimes so hard to tell until it's obvious! Now keep track of if that's a Hen or male and let me know please, lol.
Congrats on your Browns, gonna be some pretty babies runnin' around on your land