How to Sex Chickens: Male or Female

How to see if a Chicken is Male or Female

Many farmers, even experienced farmers still does not know how to tell if a chicken is male of female. We will show you exactly how to tell the difference between sexing young day old chicks and 6 week chickens or older. Telling the difference of male or female in chickens is not hard when you know what to look for. Let’s answer the question that’s been asked by millions of people – How to see if a Chicken is Male or Female.

Why is it important to know if a chicken is male or female?

Firstly if you are going to farm intensively with chickens you need female chickens to produce eggs for human consumption or fertilized eggs to grow your flock. By not knowing if your chickens are male or female means that you could loose a lot of money by raising cocks instead of hens. Cocks (male chickens) are harder to sell and of course can not produce eggs. If you know how to identify the chickens sex at an early stage, you can sell the young cocks and make money instead of raising them and loose money.

It is also important to know how to sex chickens before you buy a batch. This being said means that you can identify the chickens before buying them and buy the exact type of chicken that you need for your farming business. Chicken farmers has a profit margin to work on and making some mistakes in the beginning can be extremely costly for any farmer.

Let get started by Vent Sexing

Vent sexing is a time consuming procedure at first but as you get more experienced it becomes much faster and you can check for hens or roosters by the hundreds in just an hour. It is important to keep your day old chick or chicken calm and always respect the chickens when you work with them.

Try to sex them while they are still very young as you can easily hold the chicken in your hand. Gently place the day old chicks head between your ring finger and pinky. This will allow you to push up the feathers on the back and see the vent area.

Venting is possibly the most accurate way to sex chicks, without long stretches of involvement. You need to gently squeeze the chick on the lower end to expose their internal parts. This does not hurt the chick.

The male chicken (or rooster) will make a bubble on on top of the chickens back-side while the female chicken (Hen) has no bubble. The bubble is actually the chickens genitalia as shown on the image below.

How to Sex Chickens: Male or Female

How to feather sex a young chicken

Feather sexing is a much easier method to determine if your chicken is male of female. This procedure should be done as young as possible as the window to feather sex them closes within a couple of days. Female chicks has feathers even before they hatch while roosters will grow them only a few days after they have hatched.

How to check for wing feathers – Gently stretch the chickens wings an look for wing feather development. A female’s wing will me much more visible and variety of lengths whereas the male chicken will more likably be the same length from feather to feather.

Sexing a chick by Posture

As you get more experienced as a chicken farmer you can start sexing them by watching their posture. There is a slight but distinctive stance between a male and a female chick. A male chick has a more prominent posture whereas the female chick has a more humble posture. By this I mean the male chick will stand out taller and holds it’s head high while the female chick will keep her neck pulled in most of the time.

This takes a while to master but once you have enough experience you there is no need to pick up the chick to see if it is a male or female.

How to Sex Chickens: Male or Female
How to see if a Chicken is Male or Female

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