3.5 week old brown leghorn chick, hen or roo?

[jbs]

It may be too early to tell, but does anyone have an idea if this brown leghorn chick is a rooster? The chick looks like Count Dracula compared to my other brown leghorns, bigger and getting very dark with a more pronounced comb, but maybe the chick is just developing faster than the others. It's on the left in the first photo (the chick on the right is what my other leghorns look like). And its dead center in the second pic. Thanks for any input.

 

[DraigAthar]

3.5 weeks is a smidge young, yeah, but you'll probably be able to tell before too long! The larger comb is a bigt vote on the rooster side, heh. If the comb starts turning red and the wattles start to become very noticable before all the other chicks, then that's also indicative of roo. Does it have big feet and thick legs? Is it extra friendly?

 

[jbs]

3.5 weeks is a smidge young, yeah, but you'll probably be able to tell before too long! The larger comb is a bigt vote on the rooster side, heh. If the comb starts turning red and the wattles start to become very noticable before all the other chicks, then that's also indicative of roo. Does it have big feet and thick legs? Is it extra friendly?

I can't tell what constitutes big feet. I have a male Cuckoo Maran chick and try to compare him to the Maran female that I have and still don't see the difference with the feet. The Brown Leghorn is more brave and curious than the others, not nearly so scared of me, but maybe that's because it's more developed than the others. The five Brown Leghorns were all sexed females, but when I bought them I asked the woman at the feed store to try to pick a rooster. She selected one that had the whitest chest, said that was an indication of a male in other brown breed chickens, she wasn't sure about Leghorns.

Thanks for your message, I guess I'll give it another few weeks!

 

[DraigAthar]

The big feet thing isn't universal, but I do notice it in chicks of the same age and breed - the males almost always have bigger feet and thicker shanks. But my experience is largely with one breed (Dominiques) so it may not apply to all breeds! Same with the friendliness - it's a thing I've noticed with my Dom chicks. The ones that are friendlest when they are young, come right up to you for snacks, don't seem to mind being picked up, etc. frequently turn out to be males. My females all tend to be much more wary. Not outright skittish, but definitely not as outgoing as the boys. But the combs are a pretty good way to judge, males' combs get redder sooner, and their wattles grow bigger and redder long before the females.

 

[debid]

He's a boy alright. No need to look at anything but his feathers to know with 100% certainty. Males get dark chests because their adult plumage will be entirely different colors than the females. The girls will keep that rosy color.

 

[jbs]

He's a boy alright. No need to look at anything but his feathers to know with 100% certainty. Males get dark chests because their adult plumage will be entirely different colors than the females. The girls will keep that rosy color.

Thanks! He looks so different from the other 4 that we're starting to suspect that this chick is indeed a He, but we've never had roosters before and are new to Brown Leghorns, so we weren't sure. Brown Leghorn roosters are so handsome, I really hope that you're right. This Leghorn has a very nice personality compared to my Cuckoo Maran rooster, who's scared of everything.