Spring is chicken sexing season. The time of year backyard chicken owners stare in dismay at a huddle of fluff balls wondering girl or boy? Here's how to sex a chicken. Sort of.
Sexing a chicken yourself is usually about as reliable as doing your own taxes. I mean, you can take a guess and hope for the best but in the end you don't really know if you screwed up until it's too late. In the case of your taxes, you get the dreaded "audit" call. In the case of chickens you get the dreaded 5:00 a.m. rooster call.
But when I hatched a group of chicks years ago I decided I was going to put a few of the common sexing methods to the test and document it all. I had zero confidence any of the methods were going to work.
By the way if you have ZERO interest in how chickens are sexed, you might like to watch this video instead that just shows a bunch of my chicks as they venture into the world for the first time - including breakout of the their shell. Or if you DO have chickens but aren't interested in sexing them go on over and read why you should install an automatic coop door. LIFE changing!
O.K., now that 90% of the readers are gone, we can talk chicken penises! They're gonna be SO upset they missed out on this.
More specifically I'm going to talk about whether chickens even have a penis.
They do and they don't. Male chickens are born with a teeny tiny micro penis. They're also born with a gene that stops it from growing. So beyond the first couple of days of the chick being alive it can't be seen.
To even find it, a trained chicken sexer will hold a day old chick and push a tiny bit on the under side of the chick's vent (their bum). If a minuscule little dot pops out of the vent from the pressure, it's a male.
Sounds easy right? It's not. Vent sexing chickens is a skill that takes practice to do with accuracy and without harming the chick.
For sexing my own chicks I turned to slightly easier methods.
The first thing I had to do was put leg bands on all of my chicks, otherwise I'd never be able to tell them apart unless one of them developed a quirk, like a limp. Or spoke with an accent.
Different methods also work best with specific breeds. Some breeds of chickens automatically sex themselves at birth because of different colouring. Cream crested legbars for instance have hen chicks with a stripes down their backs. The boys on the other hand have a dot on their head. These are known as auto sexing birds.
Other chickens breeds are called Sex links. This is when two breeds of chickens are bred together and the gender of the chicks they create are easily distinguished by colour.
When a Rhode Island Red Rooster mates with a Delaware Hen the result is called a Red Sex Link. All the female chicks will be red and all the males are yellow which makes sexing them incredibly easy.
My chicks (which were a cross between a Marans and an Ameraucana) all got their own colour coded leg bands which were switched out every couple of weeks as their legs grew.
You can buy chicken leg bands but I made mine out of the smallest zip ties you can find at the hardware store. To differentiate them you can paint them with different coloured nail polishes. Amazon also sells multicoloured tiny zip ties for banding chickens.
I had chicks identified as Black, White, Dot, Teal, No Tag and Mint.
By day 2 I was ready to start sexing.
I implemented 3 different types of methods for sexing chicks: feather sexing, tail sexing and comb sexing.
Table of Contents
Sexing Baby Chicks
FEATHER SEXING CHICKS
According to some, you can feather sex a chicken within the first 3 days. A girl chicken will have 2 different lengths of wing feathers and a boy chicken will have wing feathers that are all the same length.
This apparently only works on breeds where the father was a fast feathering breed and the mother was a slow feathering breed. I had NO idea what the parents of my chicks were in terms of their feathering but I gave it a shot anyway.
In the name of science. And blogging. And curiosity.
RESULTS
The black banded, mint banded and not banded had 2 lengths of wing feathers, therefore appeared female
The white banded, dot banded and teal banded had 1 length of wing feathers, therefore appeared male
According to the feather sexing theory which may or may not apply to my chickens, I had my hands on 3 roosters and 3 hens.
Tail Sexing Chicks
Another method I read about years ago was tail development. The chicks who develop tail feathers first are female.
RESULTS
The black banded, mint banded and not banded had tail feathers, therefore appeared female
The white banded, dot banded and teal banded had no tail feathers, therefore appeared male
According to tail sexing, I also had 3 roosters and 3 hens on my hands. Even more strangely ... this method gave me the exact same results as the wing feather sexing method.
But still, I thought, it might not be true, It might be a fluke. Fluke's happen. Like that time I prepared my own tax return and it was apparently accurate. I saw that as the fluke it was and have used an accountant ever since.
Comb Colour Sexing Chicks
The most reliable way to tell if a chicken is a boy or a girl is to wait until they're a bit older (6 weeks) and to look at their combs and wattles. Combs are this ...
And wattles are this ...
Just because they're big and glooby or long or droopy means nothing. The chicken above with the huge wattles was Walnut, a hen.
BUT roosters combs turn red earlier than a hens do. They're born with cute little yellow combs and no wattles at all.
By the time a rooster starts to get past a month old, their combs turn red while the hens stay yellow.
And look at this same one from the side. THAT is what a rooster looks like. Large, red comb, and definite red wattles forming.
RESULTS
The black banded, mint banded and not banded had yellow combs, therefore appeared female
The white banded, dot banded and teal banded had red combs, therefore appeared male
In case you weren't paying attention because this is all sciencey and stuff that means ALL THREE sexing methods showed I had 3 hens and 3 roos.
Years later I can confirm that the results were true.
The 3 chickens deemed roosters by the tests were indeed roosters. The 3 chickens deemed hens by the tests were indeed hens.
Here they all are in their phases:
WHITE BANDED CHICK (Rooster)
DOT BANDED CHICK (Rooster)
TEAL BANDED CHICK (Rooster)
NON TAGGED CHICK (Hen)
MINT BANDED CHICK (Hen)
I sold the roosters, gave 2 hens away and kept The Black Banded Chick. She is now known as Baby.
BLACK BANDED CHICK (Hen)
She grew up into a a very attractive hen.
However, she is a miserable, mean chicken who chases and bites like a Rooster. But she lays the most beautiful green speckled eggs.
I can't guarantee these methods of sexing baby chicks will work for you, but it's worth trying.
This experiment was SUCH a great success for me and so completely accurate that I'm ready to take things to the next level ... I'm going to try to feather sex my accountant.
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Marguerite
Maybe I've missed it, but do you eat these chickens? I used to raise chickens (self sexing ones, though. I ate all of them so didn't care which sex they were). I REALLY enjoy not having to bump off chickens now.
Renata
The eggs are beautiful! I have a hen that lays eggs, but she was mounting and 'doing' the other ladies until we got 2 roosters. Now she has gone broody.
Caroline Montgomery
You should be able to write at least a short book, Sexing Chicks For Dummies. You are so funny and cute!
Paul Richardson
Karen i have been using the wing method for 5 years and find it 90% accurate keep up your great work
Paula
Well I can tell you that those other two hens are still doing really well and lay gorgeous eggs!
Last year I incubated and hatched 20 eggs and 3 - yes only 3 were hens.
Grace
Did you need up being right?
Karen
I did! ~ karen
B
Just wondering what type of chicks these r? They look just like one i have.
Karen
Hi B. These are Olive Eggers. So a cross between a Splash Copper Marans and an Ameraucana. ~ karen!
Ian Anderson
Hi Karen,
Love all the pics you take, makes me 'broody' for baby chickens again!
Some chickens (our own Norwegian Jaerhons included) are able to be "auto-sexed" which means the boys and girls look different on day one (different colours on the head etc.).
This means you can buy the Jaerhons relaxed in the certainty you're gonna get hens, phew. Not like the Light Sussex chicks we bought which turned out to be nearly all lads :-(
Those guys developed as you noticed with yours, plus you can also see from your pics that the legs develop bigger and taller too on the boys.
Other auto-sex breeds include... Amrock, Ancobar, Barnebar, Bielefelder Kennhuhn, Brockbar, Brussbar, Buffbar, Cambar, Cobar, Cream Legbar, Dorbar, Gold Legbar, Hambar, Niederrheiner, Norske Jaerhon, Oklabar, Polbar, Rhodebar, Welbar, Whealbar, and Wybar.
(Okay, okay, I admit, I googled that bit... https://poultrykeeper.com/poultry-breeding/autosexing-poultry/).
Enjoy your chicken therapy Karen, I can't imagine a life without hens pecking around my feet outdoors, the perfect antidote to time spent on this machine ;-)
Cheers
Jamieson
When have you ever worn MINT nail polish?? [Do not include plunging your hands into a St Patrick's Day cake.]
Marna
LOL! Loved it all, even the comments had me ROFL! I love the girlies! :)
Heather (mtl)
OMG, My face would never leave that fluff alone. Too adorable, all of them!
Elaine
Obviously, this is a question from a city girl who would love to have chickens. Don't the breeders or suppliers that sell the chicks, determine the chicks prior to sale? I saw a "Dirty Jobs" episode where Mike Rowe was taught how to determine the sex of chicks and separate them based on gender.
Karen
Hi Elaine! Only certain breeds of chickens can be sexed by looking at them day one. Chickens that are basically bred to be able to be sexed. These chickens are called "Sex Links". There are also other methods like "venting" which a professional chicken does to sex a chick. But no, most people can't sex chicks, especially ones that are cross bred like mine. Not even experienced breeders can do it. So most people buy chicks as "straight run" which means a bunch of chicks and you have NO idea if they're boys or girls until they grow up. (Oh ... and also, I bought these as fertilized eggs so there really isn't any telling what's going to develop inside.) ~ karen!
Travis
Elaine, yes, all large poultry providers will vent sex the baby chicks that are not auto sexing (you can see the difference in Male and female easily day one) the day they are hatched. This is done by professionals as it takes years of practice to master. They will sell them to you as pullets (female chicks), cockerels (Male chicks), or straight runs (non sexed). Vent sexing when done by professionals is proven to be over 90% accurate. If you get chicks from a random farmer, most likely he's not going to sex them unless they're auto sexing. The dead give away is to look for "pullets," cockerels," or "straight run" when ordering.
Stephanie Hobson
I really have nothing to add to this conversation other than you should definitely keep No Band based solely on her 6 week "yellow comb" photo.
j
OK Karen-fun-est blog yet!
Please share the % increase in readers you get immediately---
Karen
Ha! Well ... it doesn't quite work that way. I wish it did. :) ~ karen!
Joe Danford
Regarding the feathering of your accountant: Pictures of cape and shoulders I can take, but I draw the line at the fluff.
Happy Trails
Karen
Got it. I will keep that in mind. ~ karen!
FarmKid Marti
A bit lost among all the pictures of cute and tasty chickens.
Did you determine that in fact these are accurate genders that you have applied to these birds?
Or just throwing dirt clods at the fence here?
Karen
Ha! No. They are as I state. The only one that I thought might be iffy was the no tag. I considered she may be a boy but I'm 99% sure she's a girl. ~ k!
Renee
Just wondered if they have developed a distinct personalities. ALso seems like the boys are the ones with black specks on them! I especially like the feathers on dot. Bet ya keep all the girlies!
Barbie
HAHAHAHAHA! I love this one! Very interesting! I love the one you choose too! They are adorable.
Agnes
Wow how unexpectedly consistent! So you decided not to sex them by a) holding them upside down and seeing which ones struggle, b) a ring on a string or c) what shape the egg was. (or maybe d) tossing a coin, about as accurate...)
I have three. One we were sure was a rooster on day one - just by 'his' attitude! Sure enough, huge red comb and wattles very early, his 'sisters' still have yellow combs at 10 weeks.
Karin in NC
Does your accountant read your blog? I hope not - imagine his/her surprise!
The chicks are cute as they can be, btw.