# Gender check



## duncan9801 (Mar 7, 2015)

Thanks to a coyote decimating our flock this winter we have had to start over at just about square one this year. While waiting for tractor supply to get more pullets in stock, my impatient husband bought some straight run chicks. We are at the stage where they have most of their body feathers but not all the head ones, the stage where we refer to them as "the uglys" lol. My question is, when will be able to tell the gender? We have some decisions to make of we have roosters in the mix.


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## MylieD (Sep 16, 2013)

I ended up with 5 roosters out of 9 chicks this past time around. I never had roosters before, but it became completely obvious who was who. I want to say around 7 weeks you'll know. The boys get bigger combs that are red. The girls combs stay small and yellow to light pink for quit a while.


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## Greybird (May 14, 2014)

Depending on the breed, the cockerels will soon be the biggest ones in the group and they will have well-formed and colored combs long before the pullets do. 
It can happen as early as 4 weeks or it can take up to a couple of months.

Your future layers will often appear to be very puny and delicate as babies. (They aren't, but they look that way next to the boys.)


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## Goat_in_Himmel (Jun 24, 2013)

More comb development, as Greybird says. Also, I look at the feet. The boys have stout, long legs. I can tell with about 90% accuracy within the first week with my Ameraucanas, which are boys and which are girls: the girls start growing their wing feathers first, and have a more long, sweeping body, closer to the ground; the boys look like tennis balls on stilts with slower wing feather development. The intermediate ones usually tend to be boys who develop more slowly.


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