The Poultry Keeper

Kitsune · Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 1341 Location: Manchester

I've seen a lot of posts about feather sexing of chicks - I tried a little experiment with my chicks and it failed - the ones I sexed to be female at 1-3 days old were not, this produced one very unhappy nephew!

So I decided to research why it didn't work and in what situation it would work. Feather sexing only became possible in 1969 after many years of genetic research by a poultry breeding company. It is only ever possible to determine the sex in this way in a crossbreed where the male is from a fast feathering breed and the female is from a slow feathering breed. The sex of these chicks can be determined only during the first 48 hours where the females primaries will be longer than the secondaries, on the male chicks both primary and secondary feathers will be the same length.

To restate the important point here - this method is only possible on specific crossbreeds, no purebred chickens can be feather sexed.

kated · Joined: 01 Nov 2006 Posts: 1848 Location: norfolk

Thank you very much for that Kitsune. It answers a lot of questions for me.

Itsybitsy · Joined: 11 Feb 2006 Posts: 1360 Location: Leicestershire

Ahhh - that explains much! I did the same, but failed miserably, not that I am bothered as all my males get eaten plus I have mostly Marans and crosses which are pretty easy to sex by about 4 - 5 weeks anyway.

Thanks for that Kitsune.

Itsybitsy

Woodburner · Posted: Mon May 12, 2008 8:17 pm Post subject:

Darn. I had wondered about that. Well done for finding out the background!
There are different methods of feather sexing, though, do you know if this is the case with all of them or just the 3 day one?

vanessa · Joined: 24 Sep 2005 Posts: 1241 Location: Correze

Thanks for that, Kitsune ... really useful to know. I'll stop trying and resort to the "when it starts crowing" method Wink

Kitsune · Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 1341 Location: Manchester

this is the case with wing feather sexing - the only other feather sexing I've found out about is colouration and I did quite a lot of searching.

Woodburner · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 12:18 am Post subject:

Is this the same as early/late feathering, then? I thought it was something different.

The other method I have heard of is to do with the shape of feathers (near the tail I think).

Chris Kurzfeld · Joined: 29 Oct 2007 Posts: 1406 Location: Carmarthenshire

Kitsune · Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 1341 Location: Manchester

Chris Kurzfeld · Joined: 29 Oct 2007 Posts: 1406 Location: Carmarthenshire

I read this on another poultry site Kitsune and seem to remember it saying you can try the torch method from around 5 -8 weeks when the neck feathers develop - as i said I haven't tried it myself but would be interested to know. I might even try it on the ten 3 week olds when they get a bit bigger.

There are 2 Welsummer x Light Sussex in amongst them and was told that if they hatched with silver or white that it would be a cockerel and a darker one would be a pullet. Well, there was one of each but at 3 weeks the darker one is much bigger and has the beginnings of a comb - so I'm a bit puzzled.

Kitsune · Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 1341 Location: Manchester

with the welsummer x LS the female chicks have brown stripes and markings and the male chicks have a lighter greyish colour with black and grey markings.

Not quite so striking as the buff-white cross but the difference should be there.

Kitsune · Joined: 13 Mar 2008 Posts: 1341 Location: Manchester

Well - I was wrong..

With heavy breeds of chickens apparently the male feathers out more slowly and in a patchier manner than the females who feather out quicker and more evenly - though this isn't the case with all strains and isn't 100% accurate.

I've also heard that if you startle the chicks with something flying over their head like a Frisbee the males will stand up and make the warning sound and the females will crouch down silent - though I have tried this and it didn't work...

Woodburner · Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:43 am Post subject:

Chris Kurzfeld · Joined: 29 Oct 2007 Posts: 1406 Location: Carmarthenshire

Perhaps these 2 aren't Welsummer x LS then as one was dark gold with a hint of a stripe and the other pale yellow with a white chest and is now a lovely cream and pinky buff colour - please let it be a pullet Laughing

! All the rest had the definate "chipmunk" stripes of varying degrees, the one crossed with a CLB now is growing a tuft on it's head - it looks like a punk Laughing

There should be pure Welsummer as well as Welsummer x LS, CLB, Warren, Bluebelle - the Welsummer x Maran didn't hatch and a couple of black rock x welsummer may have got in by mistake. Still going to try the "torch" test in a few weeks.