How can you tell the gender of a baby chicken?
“The ability to sex day-old baby chickens is important because each gender has its own importance in the poultry industry. Hens, or female chickens, are raised to become egg producers while roosters, or male chickens, are raised to become meat producers. Knowing the sex of the day-old chickens saves the producers of these poultry products from raising chickens until they are old enough to tell apart simply by looking. It takes four to six weeks for secondary sex characteristics such as the size and shape of the comb, to become visible enough to distinguish between the two sexes. However, sexing day-old chickens is not easy due to the location of the sex organs inside the body of the chicken. Sexing day-old chickens was not proven accurate until the 1930s, when two Japanese professors perfected their technique. This technique became the first of four methods commonly accepted, known as cloacal or vent sexing. The remaining methods are the machine method, feather sexing and color sexing.
It’s very difficult for anyone other than a highly trained professional to sex day old chicks unless they are what is called ‘sex-linked’, meaning that they can be sexed by color. Sexing chicks comes from the Japanese who taught it to a few people in the USA, it’s done by looking at their vent area and giving a little squeeze and look-see, even holding up by a leg. It’s really quick when you know how.
