

However, this is only true for the first 1 - 3 days after hatch and only in certain breeds. Wing sexing only works on certain breeds where male chicks feathers grow more slowly than the female chicks wing feathers. A much safer alternative is checking your baby chicks wing feathers or buying baby chicks that are autosexing or feather sexing. While it is not always 100% accurate, the accuracy is usually well over 90%.Īgain, vent sexing can be dangerous and seriously injure your baby chicks if not done correctly. It is the process of checking a baby chicks vent to see if they have male or female parts.Įssentially, vent sexing will have a trained sexer squeeze the vent area until they can either see the male chicks' or female chicks' reproductive parts inside. Vent sexing is done by most hatcheries and should only be done by a trained expert otherwise you can injure your chick. These are vent sexing, DNA testing, wing sexing and Autosexing breeds. There are four main, non-visual methods that can be used to determine the sex of your chickens. Now, if you don't want to wait so long to tell by waiting to see who crows and who lays eggs, there are several other visual and non visual methods to use.

If you are looking on more information to help you get started raising chickens, check out our eCourse! It is pretty easy to see that a hen is getting ready to lay eggs and some of those signs of laying maturity also help tell if you have a girl or a boy, such as squatting behavior. Laying eggs can happen as early as 16 weeks in some breeds, but other breeds take longer.Ĭrowing usually happens around the same timeframe as egg laying will. So you can only use this method once your chickens reach maturity. Neither male chicks nor female chicks exhibit those behaviors at such an early age. Obviously, laying eggs and crowing are not good ways of sexing chicks. This is a pretty straight forward way to tell if your chicken is a hen or roo. Hens lay eggs Roosters crow ( do roosters lay eggs, too? No, they don't). When your chicken gets old enough (this varies by breed, but on average between 4 -5 months), it will either crow or lay an egg. OK, this is really a no brainer, but is one of the most obvious and clear ways to tell for sure what sex your chicken is so we felt it was important to include. The fact is, there are a variety of different methods that can be used to determine this, however, not all methods work on all chicken breeds or at all ages. One of the most common questions we get is from people wanting to know if they have male or female chicks. The success rate of each of these methods of determining chicken sex depends on the age, breed and your own skill level.
Male vs female silkie chicken how to#
Vent sexing, wing sexing, behavior, growth and color as well as DNA testins are all accurate ways you can learn how to sex a chicken.
