Hen or Rooster???

Is my chick a hen or a rooster?

This is the question that every chicken owner asks over and over again. There are a lot of old wise tales that claim to predict the sex of baby chicks. Chickens do not have the “typical” reproductive organs we are used to. Chickens, like many other birds have a cloaca, which is a one in all hole. The difference in male and female is a slight shape. Hatcheries have professional chick sexers that have years of training and experience. They are only 80-90% accurate. The only way to 100% know the sex is to wait until the chick is 8-15 weeks old and look for male saddle and hackle feather, which are long skinny feathers coming from the back and around the neck.

Lets go over some terminology.

Pullet-Female chick

Cockerel-Male Chick

Straight Run-Unsexed chicks

Hen-Female chicken over the age of one

Rooster-Male chicken over the age of one

When ordering chicks from a hatchery or buying from the feed store, they are sold as pullets or straight run (unsexed). If they are straight run you could potentially have all females or all males or anywhere in-between. If sexed pullets there is a chance or Oopsie Roos! So it’s always a good idea to have a plan for them.

Another option is to get autosex or sex-linked chicks. These are chicks that you can tell the sex when at hatch!

Autosex breeds include Cream Legbars, Bielefelders, and Welbars. These breeds can be sexed at hatch due to the barring gene.

Sex-linked breeds use sex-linked color or barring genes to make a cross that is able to be sexed at hatch. These are Production Reds, Red Stars, Black Sexlinks, Mystic Marans, and many others.