Friday, April 9, 2010

Sexing Chicks?

So I'm dying to know the gender on our chicks. I'm not about to do that poop thing I saw on Dirty Jobs.
Tonight, we went to the ranch supply store to buy chicken feed and chicken water dispensers. I feel like it'll make my life easier.
We met a woman there who works there in the evenings, and works on a chicken farm in the mornings. She told us how to sex a chick by looking at the wings. She said that if the wings go in a smooth, almost even pattern, they are pullets (female chickens who haven't reached maturity and laid eggs yet). If they have a couple feathers that are way longer, they are cockerels (roosters that haven't hit maturity yet).
I'm not quite going to believe it, since researching this has me believing that it's extremely difficult to tell gender for a couple months. That seems pretty obvious and easy to me.
For your entertainment, I took pictures of each of the chicken's wings tonight. My gut feeling before taking these pictures was that Sky (the blue one) and Sunkist (the orange one) were male because they seemed significantly bigger and their combs seemed more pronounced. The chicken lady's methods confirmed this.
Here is Sky's wingHere is Sunkist's wing:

The two I thought were pullets were Pinky and Clover. They both seem smaller to me.

This is Pinky
This is Clover

Seems pretty obvious, doesn't it? I'll be interested to see if it turns out to be true or not.

As you can see, they are growing like crazy. They're eating and drinking more and more.

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