Listen for the Crow

 A lot of times, people discount listening for a crow as a way to sex a chicken. The idea is that by the time a chick is crowing, it’s large enough to visually see it’s a rooster. However, this isn’t always the case. Roosters will generally start crowing at about four months of age.

By this time, it’s true that most breeds already look like roosters. However, there are actually some instances in which a chicken actually begins crowing before you can visibly tell that it’s a rooster. In these cases, when all visual cues have failed you, you can simply listen for a crow.

There are other instances of chicks crowing as young as a month old. A one-month-old chick is still fairly gender-ambiguous visually. If you’re lucky enough to have roosters start crowing at a month old, you can be pretty positive you have a rooster.

Despite rumors to the contrary, we’ve never heard hen crow. People claim it happens, but in all our experiences with chickens, this has not been the case.

So if you have a month-old chick crowing or a half-grown chick whose gender you can’t determine, listen to see if it starts crowing. If a chicken has reached six months of age and still hasn’t crowed, it’s probably a hen.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Check Comb/Wattle Colors and Sizes

Image
  A  chicken’s comb  can tell you a lot of information about it, including its gender. If you’re looking for a less invasive way to sex a chicken, you can keep an eye on its comb. This method of sexing a chicken is not as accurate as the above two methods, but it’s easier and doesn’t take as much skill or practice. If you’re using this method to sex a chicken, you’ll have to watch the chick as it grows. Once chicks are a few weeks old, their combs will become much more noticeable. A taller, fuller comb on a chick’s head most likely means it’s a male. The color of a chick’s comb can also be an excellent indication of its gender. In almost all cases, a male chick’s comb is going to be much brighter than that of a female. It doesn’t matter what color the comb is; it can be pink, red, neutral color or some other. Regardless, the males’ will be brighter than the females’. The same is true of the chicks’ wattles. In male chicks, the wattle will grow faster, longer and turn a brighter color t
Read more

VENTING

  The most accurate and successful way to sex a chicken is known as venting or   vent sexing . However, it’s also quite difficult and takes someone with a lot of skill to do. Venting works best on one-day-old chicks. With this method, you hold the one-day-old baby chick in your hand and push it down slightly below the vent so as to spread it open. This allows you to actually see the chick’s sex organs to tell if it’s a male or female. Male and female sex organs can look remarkably similar in chicks this young, so while venting is the most reliable way to sex a chicken, it’s still tough. It takes a lot of practice, and even experienced breeders don’t always make the correct determination. Furthermore, if it’s done incorrectly, it can be very dangerous for the young chick. If you squeeze too hard or do anything wrong, you can irreparably damage its sex organs or even kill the chick. This process is  never  recommended for the average person. You can, however, ask a breeder if they can ve
Read more