Feather sexing accuracy?

[Hopeful homesteader]

Something I was reading recently was talking about feather sexing of day old chicks and what you look for is whether or not feathers are visible when they hatch saying that females will have visible wing feathers and males will not have visible feathers for a few days. It said it applies to all breeds of chickens though it's not 100%, it never said how accurate this observation is. For those that are more advanced with hatching chicks, have you observed this to be pretty accurate or still 50/50?

 

[sourland]

To the best of my knowledge, feather sexing only works with certain breeds and even with certain strains within breeds.

 

[Ridgerunner]

what you look for is whether or not feathers are visible when they hatch saying that females will have visible wing feathers and males will not have visible feathers for a few days.

What you read is that boys will have no wing feathers at hatch while girls will. I rate that as extremely false. Absolutely totally not correct.

I'll link to an article about feather-sexing newly hatched chicks. It has photos that show that boys do indeed have wing feathers at hatch. The only way this type of feather sexing works is if the mother is pure for the dominant slow feathering gene and the father is pure for the recessive fast feathering gene. A usual claim on this forum is that this feather sexing works on all chicks but the science is clear that it only works when the mother is the only one with a slow feathering gene and the father only has fast feathering genes. Once a myth starts it can never be untold.

http://en.aviagen.com/assets/Tech_C...AA-How-to-11-FeatherSexDayOldChicks-EN-17.pdf

Do you have a link to where you read that? I'd like to read that statement in context to try to understand it better. I don't recall ever hearing that one before. If you repeated it accurately it is totally false. Male chicks are hatched with wing feathers.

 

[Hopeful homesteader]

To the best of my knowledge, feather sexing only works with certain breeds and even with certain strains within breeds.

That's what I had always read too but I'd never heard the presence or absence of feathers theory before.

 

[Hopeful homesteader]

What you read is that boys will have no wing feathers at hatch while girls will. I rate that as extremely false. Absolutely totally not correct.

I'll link to an article about feather-sexing newly hatched chicks. It has photos that show that boys do indeed have wing feathers at hatch. The only way this type of feather sexing works is if the mother is pure for the dominant slow feathering gene and the father is pure for the recessive fast feathering gene. A usual claim on this forum is that this feather sexing works on all chicks but the science is clear that it only works when the mother is the only one with a slow feathering gene and the father only has fast feathering genes. Once a myth starts it can never be untold.

http://en.aviagen.com/assets/Tech_C...AA-How-to-11-FeatherSexDayOldChicks-EN-17.pdf

Do you have a link to where you read that? I'd like to read that statement in context to try to understand it better. I don't recall ever hearing that one before. If you repeated it accurately it is totally false. Male chicks are hatched with wing feathers.

I'll try to find it again, it came up on a Google search.

 

[Hopeful homesteader]

What you read is that boys will have no wing feathers at hatch while girls will. I rate that as extremely false. Absolutely totally not correct.

I'll link to an article about feather-sexing newly hatched chicks. It has photos that show that boys do indeed have wing feathers at hatch. The only way this type of feather sexing works is if the mother is pure for the dominant slow feathering gene and the father is pure for the recessive fast feathering gene. A usual claim on this forum is that this feather sexing works on all chicks but the science is clear that it only works when the mother is the only one with a slow feathering gene and the father only has fast feathering genes. Once a myth starts it can never be untold.

http://en.aviagen.com/assets/Tech_C...AA-How-to-11-FeatherSexDayOldChicks-EN-17.pdf

Do you have a link to where you read that? I'd like to read that statement in context to try to understand it better. I don't recall ever hearing that one before. If you repeated it accurately it is totally false. Male chicks are hatched with wing feathers.

Here is one article I was reading

https://cs-tf.com/how-to-sex-chickens/

On rereading just now it doesn't say all chicks but also doesn't say it only works with certain breeds leaving the impression that it works for all.

 

[nuthatched]

Here is one article I was reading

https://cs-tf.com/how-to-sex-chickens/

On rereading just now it doesn't say all chicks but also doesn't say it only works with certain breeds leaving the impression that it works for all.

Just plain old internet misinformation. :}

 

[Hopeful homesteader]

Would a dark brahma hen with speckled sussex rooster have chicks that are feather or color sexed?