I’ve been doing wing sexing for fun on my hatches, just to see if I could learn. I had a Buff Orp roo over GL Wyandottes, Buff Orps, Barred Rocks & Easter Eggers.
The Barred Rock mixes were a sex link and the females had the female wing feather patterning. This gave me something definitive to study and compare to.
The GLW crosses I felt I was able to wing sex and kept a cockerel for myself. He was correctly sexed as a male, with a reddish comb by 4 weeks.
The purebred Buff Orps were the absolute hardest to sex. I kept two chicks. One is female, the other still a wait-and-see.
The Buff Orp/EE crosses had some females with very clear female wing feathering, which was nice! I did not sell the EE cross cockerel chicks and today realized one of the 5 week old “cockerels” I kept is a pullet.
When it comes to wing sexing the EE mixes, I keep mistaking a few pullets for cockerels. This is not a bad problem to have since I simply grow them all out and have started pullets to sell later.
So far, in just wing sexing mixes for fun, I’m finding it to be 80% accurate and mistaking a shorter feathered female chick, thinking it is a male, is the most common error. (I understand results are different if wing sexing purebreds and true enough, wing sexing the purebred buffs was very difficult because all 5 looked the same except for one obvious female, which I sold.)
For these mixes that I sold to a lady who absolutely cannot have roosters, the wing sexing and selecting only the most obvious females worked well! She got all pullets!
The Barred Rock mixes were a sex link and the females had the female wing feather patterning. This gave me something definitive to study and compare to.
The GLW crosses I felt I was able to wing sex and kept a cockerel for myself. He was correctly sexed as a male, with a reddish comb by 4 weeks.
The purebred Buff Orps were the absolute hardest to sex. I kept two chicks. One is female, the other still a wait-and-see.
The Buff Orp/EE crosses had some females with very clear female wing feathering, which was nice! I did not sell the EE cross cockerel chicks and today realized one of the 5 week old “cockerels” I kept is a pullet.
When it comes to wing sexing the EE mixes, I keep mistaking a few pullets for cockerels. This is not a bad problem to have since I simply grow them all out and have started pullets to sell later.
So far, in just wing sexing mixes for fun, I’m finding it to be 80% accurate and mistaking a shorter feathered female chick, thinking it is a male, is the most common error. (I understand results are different if wing sexing purebreds and true enough, wing sexing the purebred buffs was very difficult because all 5 looked the same except for one obvious female, which I sold.)
For these mixes that I sold to a lady who absolutely cannot have roosters, the wing sexing and selecting only the most obvious females worked well! She got all pullets!
