Chook Me!

How can you tell the gender of baby chicks?

Please do not reply with stupid answers. We are looking into this for a friend. thanks.

Public Comments

1. ?
2. Unfortunately, you can't until they are a few months old. You will start to see a crown form on the top of their head if it is a rooster.
3. It's not easy! And accuracy is not 100%, but here's a very good article regarding how it's done. http://www.motherearthnews.com/Sustainable-Farming/1974-05-01/How-to-Sex-Day-Old-Chicks.aspx?page=2 Good luck!
4. boy chicks have a dark strip from head to tail. girls are just yellow.
5. My family has had chickens for a few years now and as far as I'm aware you just have to wait and see, sooner or later the males will start trying to crow and bullying the rest. Wikipedia suggests a few ways we never tried though, so see what you recon... "Feather sexing Feather sexing is easy, but it requires that the chickens be specially bred to manifest their sex in differences in the feathers as hatchlings. Male chickens in these breeds have longer wing pinfeathers than the females do, which makes them relatively easy to tell apart. Most chickens do not have these traits bred into them, and the hatchlings are identical to all but the skilled eye of the professional chicken sexer. Vent sexing Vent sexing, also known simply as venting, involves literally squeezing the feces out of the chick, which opens up the rectum (more properly, the cloaca) slightly, allowing the chicken sexer to see if the chick has a small "bump", which would indicate that the chick is a male. Some females have very small bumps, but rarely do they have the large bumps male chicks possess."
6. Never saw the Dirty Jobs episode? You have to squeeze the poop out of em and look for a bump. Bump = boy. No bump = girl.
7. you can take it to a vet and get a blood test, or if it lays eggs it a girl.