No matter the breed, colour or size, everyone finds chicks extremely cute. Over the years, we have had people asking if certain chicks were male or female.
There are several ways to differentiate:
- Autosexing breeds
- DNA tests:
- Buying from aa breeder, farmer or hatchery (though you may have to check theirreputation.
- Wing and vent sexing
- Behaviour.
Autosexing breeds
Autosexing breeds are pure breeds of pultry that have different coloured male and female chicks when they hatch They can range from a completely different leg colour, a slight lighter or darer colour or different markings.
Personally we have legbars and wellsummers. We have found the legbars are th easiest to sex as noted on the photo below.
Here is a list of the autosexing chicken breeds:
- Bielefelder Kenhuhn
- Brockbar
- Brussbar
- Buffbar
- Cambar
- Cream legbar
- Dorbar
- Wellsummer.
DNA test
As the title suggests, through a sample sent to laboratory, the sex is determined with 99% effectiveness.
Personally, we have never used this type of service because we not find it necessary and also due to high cost. Unfortunately, I cannot give a more detailed or personal information/experience.
Chick from breeder, farmer or hatchery
Despite this not being a way to sex chicks, it is the easiest one way to choose if you want males or females.
It is always the best option to buy through a reputed breeder, farmer or hatchery. This way you can be sure you're buying healthy birds, with vaccines that are not available to everyone, and, most of the time, female chicks. In case you acquire, by error, a male chick, they tend to accept the chick back if you cannot keep it.
Unfortunately there has been an increase in scams or non-experienced breeders, who kust want to reproduce their birds to earn more money, not caring about the breeding standards or animal welfare. In these cases, if you get a male chick, they are less likely to accept it back.
Wing sexing
Wing sexing can be attempted on many breeds and hybrids. It takes a picky eye and, most people, find it difficult and give up. Slow growing dual purpose breeds are often the hardest to wing sex. Some males will feather quickly and some females will feather slowly, which just adds further confusion.
It has been my experience that, in every hatch, around 1/3 of females will hatch with extra pin feathers and will, indeed, be females. The rest of the hatch is kind of an educated guess.
Let me begin by saying this is not an easy skill to learn from pictures on a blog. It takes practice. It is also helpful to have a very picky eye because you are going to be looking for differences measured in mere millimeters.
This also only works on chicks that are 48 hours old or less. By 3 days old, most chicks will wing sex as female. I have found wig sexing is best done between 12 and 24 hours of hatching, when the pin feathers, on the tip of the chick's wings, are clearly visible but have not started feathering out, which begins by day 3. Wing sexing is believed to be up 85%accurate but mistakes can be made, especially when sexing dual purpose breeds.
Wing sexing is possible because female chicks grow feathers slightly faster than male chicks for the first week or two. Looking at wing tips of a 12 hours old female chick wil revel very long pin feathers with shorter pin feathers in between each long one in a long-short-long patern. It is the long pin feathers, not just the pattern, that identifies a female.
To see the pin feathers, you must gently hold the downy fluff on the wind tip out od the way. A female's pin feathers will be easier to notice.
Vent sexing
Vent sexing is the most accurate way to figure out if chicks will be hens or roosters.
Most chicks hatcheries have professional chick vent sexers who get it right more than 90% of the time. For us, backyards enthusiasts, chick vent sexing just isn't something we can realistically do.
You can easily injure a chick if you don't know what you are doing. Please, leave vent sexing to the professionals. For that reason, we will not explain how this is done in order to dis-encourage people from trying.
Behaviour
From the first days of life, sex can be determined by behaviour and body language. When they become more active, around 5-6 days old life, the chicks begin to develop a complex system of socialisation and hierarchy, which they will use when they are older.
I will try to show this in the pictures below.
Let's play a game. Do you think you can identify the sex of the 3 chicks, cockerels or pullets on the above pictures? Don't look at the answers before you have tried to guess.
HERE WE GO NOW
Depending on the breed, the combs and wattles will develop faster and gain a reddish colour on males, who will also develop a spur on both feet.
They will start small disputes between the males over the top of the hierarchy. If there is more than one male, one will be the dominant and then you will have a "second in command". The others will be excluded and it's possible you will see they are the bottom of the hierarchy because they will be bullied and will show themselves as submissive.
Hope this has been helpful. It you need more help, don't hesitate to contact us. 🐔
With love, from our team,
FL Poultry
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