Welsummer Chicks, How do you tell Hens from Roosters?

[lauralou]

I can never tell for certain until they start getting chest feathers. I have a batch that are about 3 weeks old and starting to show their sex clearly. I can still see the markings on the head, and one that is definitely a girl has head markings that scream "Boy!".

What a pleasant surprise!

 

[Goose and Fig]

I tried the color sexing- if they have "eyeliner" and a vivid triangle on the head they are supposedly girls. Whitmore Farms has a "how to" on their site. In my case it did NOT work. It looked like I had 2 girls, and at 2 weeks they developed big combs (yes- 2 weeks!) and they both started getting black in the chest. Going to be making lots of olive-eggers I guess!

 

[feedstorechick]

Thanks for the replies. I have a couple with really sharp marking with black outlines, some with average markings and at the other end, one with paler brown markings. This was more of a range than I expected.

I'll watch for those chest feather colors in a couple of weeks!

 

[gumpsgirl]

Quote:
So if this is true, then that means my lonely little welsummer chick is a girl!!

(I think

)

She could have some company...I have one lonely Wellsummer here that by the Wellsummer page here on BYC on how to sex them is a pullet.Not quoting it but the pullets have eye liner and a defined V and the boys don't believe that's what I read.

Yep! My pullets always had the eyeliner (which I forgot to mention) and the boys did not, along with the defined V. I could tell every time which was which and it always came out right. Where it hasn't worked that way for others, it could just be the bloodlines.

 

[LauraSBale]

Quote:
I would say the same the 2 on left back are boys, the girls will have a V dark area on the top of the head, the males will have lighter one

the 3 on the right are girls

the 2 on front left, ? not sure you can see the V but its not as dark as the girls on the right.

 

[lurky]

Quote:
I would say the same the 2 on left back are boys, the girls will have a V dark area on the top of the head, the males will have lighter one

the 3 on the right are girls

the 2 on front left, ? not sure you can see the V but its not as dark as the girls on the right.

The one i ? is the right, bottom of the pic.

I am not very experienced at this, but the few i have guess at in the past have been correct by that formula

 

[LauraSBale]

Congrats, I had 16 eggs, of wellies and only 1 hatched, and its a girls, she is now 23 weeks, and lays beautiful eggs, i want to get more in the spring

 

[becky3086]

He he, sounds like witchcraft and old wive's tales, maybe you should just go back to picking them up by their necks. The ones that thrash around are supposed to be boys, lol.

 

[EweSheep]

In certain bloodlines, you can tell the sex by the color but it does not always work (for me).

I have Calicowoods and Lowell Barber lines and every time I hatch chickies, I get a fifty fifty chance of getting males and females. Some females I have DID NOT have the pronounced Vs or eyeliners. And the males did have some Vs like the so called female markings.

Here is the pic of the pullet chick, notice her markings!

See the pictures of the bantam chicks, all I got was two pullets which the markings on them were half pullets and half roos. Boy was I wrong!

 

[skeeter9]

Yep, certain lines of Wellies can be sexed pretty accurately by their head markings, but not all. When I had them, my birds were Lowell Barber lines, and I could almost always sex them accurately - very handy!! a friend has other lines, and she can't sex them reliably that way at all. It would be interesting to keep track of markings and see if you can do it accurately with your particular lines.