Everyone wants to buy female chicks that will lay eggs. But how do you know you’re getting a female and not a male? I’ll show you the subtle differences so you can increase your chances of ending up with all pullets who will lay eggs for you. Here is how to identify male & female chicks.
How to Identify Male & Female Chicks
What is a pullet and a cockerel?
A cockerel is a male chick – a baby rooster – that will grow up to crow. A pullet is a female chick that will grow up to be a laying hen. Only female hens lay eggs and her body will naturally begin producing eggs around 20 to 24 weeks old. She does not require the presence of a rooster to lay eggs. Similar to human females, she will begin ovulating when it is her time, even if no males are present.
What does Straight Run mean?
Straight run means the chicks are sold as a mix of males and females that have not been sexed. In large groups of chicks the ratio is 50/50 male to female but when buying smaller numbers, your ratios can vary widely and sometimes result in getting mostly males. Hopefully some of the images below can help you identify cockerel chicks so that you can avoid purchasing unwanted roosters.
Sexing Day-Old Chicks
Sexing day-old chicks is difficult because in most breeds males and females look the same. There are a few different techniques that can be used.
Auto-Sexing & Vent sexing
A few breeds are auto-sexing, which means the males are born one color and the females are another. If the chicks all look the same, the most reliable way to determine is vent sexing by a professional who looks inside the chick’s rectum for anatomical ridges all males have. (By the way, chickens do not have penises and their testicles are held deep inside their body cavity, which is one reason why sexing chicks is so difficult.) Vent sexing is a trade profession and not something that most breeders know how to do with a high rate of accuracy.
If you are buying chicks from a hatchery or bin at the feed store, the chicks should have been professionally vent sexed by the hatchery and sold as sexed pullets. Straight run chicks should be clearly marked as such. It is always worth paying an extra dollar or two for sexed pullets. Once you factor in the cost of feed, it is actually worth about $25 per bird to pay for sexed pullets so only paying an additional dollar per chick is a bargain.
Wing Sexing
Wing sexing can be attempted on many breeds and hybrids. Wing sexing takes such a picky eye that most people find it difficult and give up. Slow growing dual purpose breeds are often the hardest to wing sex. Some males will feather quickly and some females will feather slowly, which adds further confusion. It has been my experience that in every hatch around 1/3 of females will hatch with extra long pin feathers and will, indeed, be female. The rest of the hatch is kind of an educated guess.
Let me begin by saying this is not an easy skill to learn from pictures on a blog. It takes practice. Also helpful is a very picky eye because you are going to be looking for differences measured in mere millimeters.
best done at 12-24 hours old
This also only works on chicks that are 48 hours old or less. By 3 days old most chicks will wing sex as “female”. I have found wing sexing is best done between 12 and 24 hours of hatching, when the pin feathers on the tip of the chick’s wings are clearly visible but have not started feathering out, which has begun by day 3. Wing sexing is believed to be up to 85% accurate and mistakes can be made, especially when sexing dual purpose breeds.
Wing sexing is possible because female chicks grow feathers slightly faster than male chicks for the first week or two. Looking at the wing tip of a 12 hour old female chick will reveal very long pin feathers with shorter pin feathers in between each long one in a long-short-long-short pattern. It is the long pin feathers – not just the patterning – that identifies a female. To see the pin feathers, you must gently hold the downy fluff on the wing tip out of the way. A female’s pin feathers will likely be easy to view.
How Female Wing Feathers Look at 12 Hours Old:
Males have shorter pin feathers overall. You will try to move the down out of the way to view the pin feathers and feel like you can’t hardly see them at all. These quite short, hard-to-individually-view pin feathers are indicative of a male. You’ll also notice all the pins seem to be the same stubby length and the shorter pins are difficult to see.
How Male Wing Feathers Look at 12 Hours Old:
When wing sexing recently hatched chicks, I find it easiest to locate a very obvious female. Closely observing her pin feather patterning helps me start to identify the subtle differences between males and females. If you’re having a hard time, you probably need to wait until the chicks are 12 to 18 hours old when the pin feathers have grown a little more. Wing sexing just-hatched chicks that are not fully dry is extremely difficult.
Leg Color Sexing
Leg color sexing is the least reliable sexing method and is folk wisdom, not a true technique.
The saying goes that a chick with darker legs and “smearing” that goes all the way down the leg through the center toe is a female.
In the above image from Hoover’s Hatchery, the female on the left has darker black legs with color that goes all the way down her center toes. The male on the right happens to have smearing through his center toe but his upper legs are lighter and mottled. Since these are a sex linked hybrid, which means the males are a different color, the male is identified by the yellow spot on his head and not his leg color.
This tip does not work on most breeds, nor on breeds with solid white or yellow colored legs. I mention it only as an anecdotal way of perhaps increasing your chance of selecting a female from a bin of barnyard mix chicks.
Sexing Week-Old Chicks
When you go to buy chicks, often times they are already 3 to 7 days old. In many breeds the pullets feather out slightly faster than cockerels, giving you a way to perhaps visually sex the chicks.
Females tend to develop tail feathers much more quickly than males for the first two weeks. Similarly, females have wing feathers that have grown slightly faster – and appear longer – than male chicks of the same age.
Males will often still have fluff nub tails at 7 days old where pullets will have visible tail feathers developing.
Please note that pullets will only feather out faster for the first couple weeks. Around 15 days old male and female chicks will have similar looking wings and tails.
Sexing Chicks 3 Weeks Old
At 3 weeks old cockerel chicks suddenly have the skin under their chins flush a popsicle pink color where they will begin to develop wattles. Even just a little tiny bit of barely-there hint of a flush of pink is a cockerel. Any shade of pink in the wattles of a 3 week old is a male. Females have wattles the same translucent nude color as this chick’s beak.
Sexing Chicks 5+ Weeks old
By 5 weeks old the wattles are reddening and becoming pendulous. Cockerel’s combs will also begin to grow taller, larger and more blush colored than female hatch mates, whose combs remain a nude champagne color.
Buying Straight run day old chicks from Breeders
If a breeder is selling day-old chicks straight run, she probably cannot wing sex them. The breeder will typically let you handle and select your own chicks. While it is understood that buyers will do their best to chose only pullet chicks, if you are able to sex the chicks it is polite to help the breeder identify obvious males that you are not intending to buy. I first learned wing sexing from a buyer who paused to show me. I gladly helped her select only female chicks to buy, considering the cost of unwanted males worth the learning experience.
Buying Started Pullets from Breeders
If a breeder is selling chicks that are 4 weeks or older as “straight run”, she may be attempting to get rid of cockerels. It is fairly easy to sex all non-bearded and non-Silkie breeds by 4+ weeks of age. Request to buy started pullets and be willing to walk away if it is not going to work out. (Silkie chicks are some of the most difficult to sex. Roosters are finally identifiable around 14 weeks when they crow. Silkie chicks are always sold straight run for this reason.)
Sexing Bearded Breeds like Americanas and Easter Eggers
Breeds with fluffy, bearded faces like Easter Eggers are sometimes wing sexable at hatch. If they were not wing sexed, their fluffy faces make seeing developing wattles almost impossible. Luckily their pea combs can be of some help. 3 week old males will have wider combs with 3 rows of ‘bumps’ visible, the center row being the largest. The rhyme “Three in a row? That bird will crow!” can help you remember that three visible rows of ‘peas’ on a chick’s pea comb likely means male. The young cockerel’s comb will be the watery pink color of a light rosé wine. Their feet will be larger and wider, with leg and ankle bones that are visually thicker than a female’s.
Easter Egger Roosters
Americana and Easter Egger cockerels will often develop rust colored patches on their shoulders around 6 weeks old. Tail feathers will begin to have tips that arch or curve downward around 5 weeks old. Iridescent blue or green colors that develop during month 2 in their pointy ended, arching tail feathers is one of the most obvious clues that the chick is a cockerel. Pretty, iridescent feathers showing up in the tail have a 99% chance of being a cockerel.
If the worst happens
If the worst happens and you end up with an unwanted rooster, you can re-home him for free using the MeWe app which allows the selling of livestock, unlike Facebook. Search your city or state name plus “chicken” or “poultry” to find a group to request to join. There you’ll find a number of breeders who can give him a happy country home.
More In-Depth Reading
I hope the images and tips on how to identify male & female chicks makes your selection process much easier! If you’d like more in-depth reading, a historical document put out by Kansas State College in 1942 goes into more detail on sexing chicks and breeding in ways that help a keeper to sex her chicks at hatch.
Debbie May says
I’m so glad I found you site. I have agreed to take in two Easter Eggers and am not positive they are females. After reading about them here, I can be fairly certain they are females and look forward to some pretty eggs!
Toria says
Thank you for the info. I was suspicious of a rooster and now I’m sure. I will have to find him a home…. so sad 😞
Djst org says
I don’t even know how I ended up here, but I thought this post was good. I do not know who you are but certainly you are going to a famous blogger if you are not already 😉 Cheers!
Meagan Goodman says
This is the BEST article I have found yet for visually sexing chicks, and I have done a LOT of searching. Very well done! Great pictures to illustrate points. Will be checking out your other articles as well. Thank you!
Mallory says
Does the “3 in a row” comb test work on all breeds or only pea-comb breeds?
Tay Silver says
Hi Mallory!
In my limited personal experience, I have only found the “3 in a row” rhyme apply to pea combed breeds and hybrids. I use Whiting True Blues to breed Olive Eggers and many of the pea-combed olive egger male offspring has had the same three rows of peas show up. When it comes to other comb types, I have not heard of three rows of bumps appearing. In general, a chick with a very wide comb, even at hatch, is more likely to be male. I hope this helps!
Mallory says
Thanks! I have six unsexed chicks from a small farm who seems to be breeding for egg color similarly to you. Four are Welsummer crosses, one is a BCM cross, the last a “mystery” Marans cross. All six have a Whiting True Blue father. A couple seemed to have that 3-in-a-row comb (a little discouraging), but we are also looking for tail feathers to come in too (they hatched 5 days ago).
Rachel says
Very helpful post, thank you! I’ll be coming back to it every time I have a hatch scheduled!