Sexing Chicks After a Few Weeks

Advice from the creater of the
Henderson's Chicken Chart

Sexing young chicks is a difficult task. Using an ancient Japanese and Chinese art that was refined and placed on a scientific foundation by poultry professors Kiyoshi Masui and Juro Hashimoto around 1930, a professional chick sexer can examine the vent of a recently hatched chick in less than three seconds and determine its sex with greater than 98% accuracy (I've seen some sources claim the rate is 99.8% and others lower it to 90-95%.). The best professionals can accurately examine thousands of chicks in a single day. You can read a book (online, for free, thanks to Cornell's Core Historical Literature of Agriculture [CHLA]) written by Charles Shelby Gibbs in 1935 about the technique, but it is delicate work, and unless you know what you are doing, you can harm or needlessly worry a chick. For the rest of us, instead, the best advice may be to wait. There may be clues within the first week, but there is absolutely no certainty then. After a month, you may have some more confidence, but it might be false confidence. It may take until they are seven weeks before you can be more certain -- or fourteen weeks, or even five months old. Eventually, however, the secondary sex characteristics, behavior, and, especially, crowing will tell you if you have a cockeral.

For those of you who can't wait, here is a chart that can help you guess more confidently. It is absolutely, positively guaranteed not to be 100 percent accurate. Please don't use this chart to compare chicks of different breeds, since they will not develop the same way or at the same rate. I have purposefully omitted reference to days or weeks when to expect to be able to observe difference since they will vary so widely by both breed and individual.

Clues for Sexing Chicks After a Few Weeks,
based on secondary sex characteristics

Trait or Characteristic

Cockerel

Pullet

Heavy Breeds
(Asian, American, English)

Mediterranean & Other Light Breeds

Comb & Wattles

Comb early to turn pink. Later comb and wattles noticably larger & redder

Comb early to turn pink. Later comb and wattles noticably larger & redder

Comb and wattles usually remains yellow much longer

F
e
a
t
h
e
r
i
n
g

EARLY

Still mostly fluffy & downy

Fairly quick feather development
Quick feather development

LATER SIGNS

Development slow and in patches. Some bareness at shoulders, back & wing bows

Development only slightly slower than pullets
Even development on back, chest, & thighs. Reaches complete feathering sooner

FINAL CLUES

Development of long, pointed & shiny hackle and saddle feathers

Development of long, pointed & shiny hackle and saddle feathers
Feathers in hackle and saddle areas are oval & rounded

Tail

Stumpy, curved; slow to develop

Curved, but only slightly shorter and slower to develop than pullets
Long, straight; quick to develop

Legs

Long, sturdy; spurs developing

Long, sturdy; spurs developing
Short, delicate

Head

Larger & more angular

Larger & more angular
Small & round

Size

May be larger (perhaps shorter in length but stouter, more thickset) or becomes noticably larger

Becomes noticably larger eventually
Small, although may be longer

Posture

Upright & erect

Upright & erect
Lower set

Behavior

May be more alert, aggressive, & noisy; will emit pre-crowing chirps before crowing

May be more alert, aggressive, & noisy; will emit pre-crowing chirps before crowing
May be more docile, but can also be aggressive & noisy

I don't have information or experience with bantams or game birds, so you are on your own for them.

Acknowledgments: The chart includes some information gained from personal observation but was also adapted in part from information found on three different sources: a chart on Greg Davies's The Chook Shed and two sites that no longer exist: one by a vet at UC Davis and another from Eleanor (aka Henwife).

This page authored and maintained by John R. Henderson (jhenderson@ithaca.edu), Sage Hen Farm, Lodi, NY.
Last modified: March 30, 2011
URL: http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/sexingchicks.html