How Not to Sex a Chicken

 There are tons of old wives tales out there telling people how they can identify the genders of their chickens. Please don’t listen to these. The only credible ways to sex a chicken are those listed above. If someone tells you another “sure-fire” way to identify a chicken’s gender, it’s not going to be accurate.

Some of these old wives tales include the following:

The Shape of the Egg

For decades, people have been saying that you can tell the gender of a chick before it ever hatches simply by looking at the shape of the egg. It’s believed by some that if an egg is round, that egg contains a female chick. Conversely, if the egg is narrow and pointed, it’s believed to hold a male chick.

This is utter nonsense. The shape of an egg has literally nothing to do with the gender of the chick inside. Don’t fall for it. If you’re determining your chicks’ genders based on this, you’ll have just as much luck flipping a coin.

Turning a Chick Upside Down

Another false tale about determining gender involves turning a chick upside down. It’s believed that a female chick will stay that way, just hanging there limply. It’s believed that if the chick is a male, though, it will start fighting to right itself.

This, too, is nonsense. Furthermore, turning your chicks upside down can potentially hurt them. So please don’t flip baby chicks upside down. It will not give you any reliable information about the chick’s gender, and it could cause a lot of harm.

The Egg Float Test

Another crazy story about determining gender is to put an egg in water and see if it floats. If it does, the egg is assumed to contain a female chick. If it doesn’t, the egg is supposedly home to a male chick. This is utter rubbish and can potentially kill the chick inside the egg.

There is actually an egg float test, but it has nothing to do with determining the sex of a chicken. What the egg float test actually does is tell you how fresh an egg is for eating.

You drop an egg in water. If it floats to the top, it’s an old egg and should be thrown away. If the egg sinks to the bottom of the glass of water and lays on its side, it’s a very fresh egg. If the egg sinks but sits upright, it’s not super fresh, but it’s still edible.

In Conclusion

There are six reliable ways to sex a chicken. Of these six ways, there are only two (venting and feather sexing) which are incredibly reliable; we’ll say 90%. Listening for your chick to crow is also a very reliable way of determining gender, although it’s not always helpful if the chick is half-grown before it crows.



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