Sexing Chicks 12 - 24 hours Old

 

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 wingtip 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 identify 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:

The female’s pin feathers are so long you can easily see them. The pins make a very obvious long-short pattern.

The downy fluff barely needs to be moved out of the way to see the long pin feathers on a female.

Long pin feathers and clear patterning are still obvious in solid-colored chicks.

Males have shorter pin feathers overall. You will try to move them 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:

If the pin feathers are so short you can barely get the fluff out of the way to see them, the chick is likely male.

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.

Image Source: HooversHatchery.com

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.