How To Tell If A Chick Is A Hen Or A Rooster
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At one week old, Lynn goes through her newly hatched chicks and shows the two feather signs she and Travis use to guess hen or rooster. She handles each bird in turn, spreading the wings so you can see exactly what she is pointing at on an Easter Egger, two Black Copper Marans, and a Rhode Island Red.
What Lynn shows you
- The main tell she uses: spread the wing and look for long primary feathers with a shorter set of secondaries behind them, "a long, a short, a long, a short." That pattern she reads as a pullet.
- A chick whose wing feathers are all one length, with no secondary set, she reads as a cockerel.
- The second sign is tail feathers already coming in at a week old. She says roosters do not do that; the one she thinks is a rooster has "just his little fuzzy butt" and no tail at all.
- She hedges rather than declares. On her suspected Black Copper Marans rooster she says she is "pretty sure, 90% sure."
- Out of 11 chicks she thinks she has nine hens and two roosters, and says she will update as they grow. She handles them two or three times a day so they do not grow up scared of her.
These notes summarise the video — watch it for the full method.
