Let's Stay in Touch!
Subscribe here to receive regular emails from Eight Acres, including a free Guide to Starting a Simple Life...
Determining the gender of young chickens: are those chicks hens or roosters?
If you showed me any of these chickens on their own, I wouldn't know if they were roosters or pullets, but when you see them next to each other, its easy to pick the difference. The hens have less developed crown and wattles compared to the roosters, they are also slightly smaller, this is apparent at a few weeks of age, as soon as they start developing crowns. If you can't see any difference between your chicks, you may have all of one sex, which does make things difficult and you have to start looking at tail shape to figure out the sex.
We don't always get it right and sometimes add a rooster into the pullets (just over-optimistic at the number of layers I think), so we will just keep an eye on them now and see if I counted correctly :)
A young Rhode Is Red rooster |
And a Rhode Island Red pullet at the same age |
A young White Leghorn rooster |
And a White Leghorn pullet at the same age |
How do you tell your baby chickens apart?
Sign up for my weekly email updates here, you will find out more about soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post! New soap website and shop opening soon....
Share this
Recent Posts
eBooks By Eight Acres
View allRelated Posts
-
Should I be worried about bird flu in Australia?
Jump to the end if you just want a summary, or read the whole story about why we've bought more laying hens (read mor...
-
Why do chickens stop laying eggs in winter?
Chickens naturally stop laying eggs in winter. Actually when you think about it, the fact that they lay an egg a day...
-
Backyard Chickens - where to start!
Backyard chickens are said to be the “gateway” animal to more serious homesteading. They are small and easy to care f...
-
Hatching chicks - incubator vs mama hen
Over the years I've hatched hundreds of chicks using an electric incubator, but I never used a clucky hen to hatch ch...
-
Chicken feed and water options
Chickens are really easy to look after. They only need a few things - somewhere warm and dry to sleep and lay eggs, r...
-
Butchering Poultry
Last weekend we got up early and prepared for a morning of killing poultry, not my ideal Saturday morning, but the ti...
Leave a comment