Sex

Always a tricky issue for the poultry keeper, not least when attempting to determine the gender of chicks.

Ben's research into the subject on Tuesday led us to a website which described how to sex 2-3 day old chicks on the basis of the outer wing feathers. According to the video we watched, if there are two rows of feathers, one long, one short, on the end of the wing, the bird is female. If there is only one row of feathers visible, it's a male. So off to the brooder we went to haul out some chicks for inspection...

First out: two rows of feathers. Second out: two rows of feathers. Third out: two rows of feathers. Fourth out: two rows of feathers. And so on. At this point we began to wonder just how reliable this method is. Being naturally inclined to pessimism, I was quite prepared to believe that we had seven cockerels in the brooder, but seven hens seemed a tad implausible. Several possibilities therefore occurred to us:

1. We had misunderstood the video and were doing it wrong. A quick check seemed to indicate that we had got it right, though.

2. We had left it too late to sex chicks by this method. The first chick hatched on Friday, the last ones on Saturday evening. So it could be that we were too late on Tuesday, but not by much. On the other hand, the wing feathers do come in at quite a rate. So a day could make a big difference.

3. We were picking up the same chicks every time. Erm... This is certainly a possibility as we weren't particularly methodical in terms of separating the chicks which had been checked. Well,  in truth we didn't do it at all. After a half hour of picking up random chicks, though, we couldn't find one with a single row of feathers on the wing tip.

So, it looks like it's either back to the interwebs to find alternative sexing methods, or sit back and let time do the work for us. In the meantime, a more pressing issue is sorting out some accommodation for them as they continue to grow at an alarming rate.