How to Tell If You Have a Rooster Baby Chick

Baby chicks can be sexed.

Modern hatcheries or poultry farms have expert chick sexers who can tell the difference between male and female chickens to check if the chicken will grow to become a rooster. Hatcheries will then feed chicks separately. Chickens generally do not show any difference in gender soon after hatching. After a few weeks it becomes easy for non-experts to tell chickens that will become hens and chickens that will become roosters.

Things You'll Need

• Chicks
• Telephone number of a professional chick sexer

Instructions

1. Check the color of the chick. In some breeds the female chicks hatch with a redder color compared with male chicks.

2. Call a chick sexer to perform venting of the chick. Venting involves opening the anal vent or cloaca of the chick. Female chicks have small bumps, and male chicks have large bumps.

3. Ask the chick sexer to perform pubic bone sexing. The sexer will place the index finger on the chick's pubic bone. The index finger will fit correctly into the pubic bone of a female chick. If the index finger does not fit, you have a rooster baby chick.

4. Check the wing feathers of an older chick when the feathers start growing. If your chick has a mixture of short and long feathers, you have a rooster. Female chicks will have only short feathers.

5. Wait till your chick gets older to easily identify if your chick is a rooster. The rooster chick will have a red or pink comb that will grow fast, and its saddle and hackle feathers will become shiny and pointed.

Tips & Warnings

• Unproven old wives tales on how to identify the sex of your chick exist. Many of the methods in these old wives tales may harm or permanently maim the chick.

References

• The Chook Shed: Sexing Chicks
• The Poultry Site: Sexing Chicks in the Backyard Flock