Determining the sex of a chick by the feathers doesn’t always work in the 2nd and 3rd generation.
It is Year 2 of trying to determine the sex of my newly hatched chicks by their feather shape.
Year 1 was a success, as you can read here.
Now it is Year 2 (with 2 generations hatched from the original hatchery chickens, which would be considered Gen-0).
Check out my guess at the beginning of Year 2:
Wyandotte turned out to be a Wyandotte/Australorp mix (Australorp rooster, Wyandotte hen):
The chicken was developing nice laced feathers. I was sure that this was a hen, until it turned into a crazy rooster bastard! The parent Australorp rooster would attack my leg after I walked past. This rooster cockerel inherited the Crazy trait from it’s father.
This rooster cockerel inherited the Crazy trait from it’s father.
We also have a Brahma/Buff Orpington mix (Brahma rooster, Buff Orpington hen).
Brahma/Buff Orpington mix chick
The feathers of the wing are classic symmetrical “swoop” that usually indicates a female.
Wrong. It is also a rooster:
Brahma/Buff Orpington rooster
This saddened me, because I really like the white coloring with slight yellow streaks. This rooster (so far) is not aggressive, but it is increasingly rooster-like every day.
Sexing a chick by its feathers only goes so far.
According to Cackle Hatchery – What is Feather Sexing? Separating Fact from Myth, you can only use feather sexing technique for the 1st generation.
“A chick can be feather sexed only if its mother is slow feathering and its father is fast feathering. Furthermore, you can’t get feather sex chicks by mating a feather sex rooster to a feather sex hen. It works only for the first generation.”
“Slow feathering” and “fast feathering” is difficult to understand unless you are a hatchery. Basically, they have two separate flocks with specific wing traits and they cross them to get a specific result. The technique works more with broilers than with egg laying chickens. (That is why you still get up to 50% roosters in straight run chicks from the farm store).
And in general, you can only use feather sexing in the first week.
This was the Brahma at a few days old:
This was the Brahma at 10 days old. The secondary feathers, which are usually shorter in males, will catch up with the primary feathers, so it gets harder to sex the chick based on its feathers as it gets older.
To make matters worse, these are cross breeds from my flock. Chicken feather sexing becomes more difficult in regular cross breeds in your everyday flock, rather than in a controlled environment like a hatchery.
Would I do it again?
Yes, for first generation chicks.
