When a non-barred male is used, such as any solid black male, or even an Ancona or Rhode Island Red, the chicks will all be black or dark brown with varying degrees of white in their down-but the male chicks will have a white spot on their heads. Using a wild-type, or Black Red male, like Brown Leghorn, Dark Cornish, or BBRed Old English Game, with the silver pattern females yields chicks where the males will have a lighter, grayish color, particularly on the dorsal stripes, and females will have brown stripes and markings. The Dutch have been crossing Golden Campine males to Silver Campine females for centuries to produce chicks that can be sexed at day-old based upon down color. Female chicks will have reddish-brown or buff down. Male chicks from these crosses will have whitish, grey, or pale brown down. (In color genetics, gold is the gene that produces red color and silver is the gene that produces white color.) Examples include gold males such as Rhode Island Red, Buff Orpington, New Hampshire crossed to silver females such as Rhode Island White, White Plymouth Rock, Delaware, Light Sussex, White Wyandotte. The classic cross is of color patterns of gold with those of silver. When crossing varieties or breeds the chicks often can be sexed based upon down color. I have found this true for my Buckeye chicks as well, though they are richer in down color. ![]() Female chicks will often have a brown or black spot on their heads, or even hints of brown lines on their backs. If one closely observes these chicks it will be noticed that the male chicks will have off-white streaks in the down color at the upper wing joints. Both New Hampshires and Buff Orpingtons produce buff-colored chicks. This will prove true in other Barred or Cuckoo patterned chicken breeds. But the better method is to note that male chicks tend to have yellow spots on their heads. Old research demonstrates that there are subtle differences in the light-colored down around and on their wings-the males having more light color. Some other heritage chicken breeds that can often be sexed at hatch include Barred Plymouth Rocks that produce chicks that are black with spots of yellow or white. The males have clean heads with only two colors of dorsal stripes, which often end in a dot at the crown females have three colors of dorsal stripes, a black or dark brown added outside the other two, and the strips typically run to and through the crown. For more than 100 years, and possibly more like a thousand years, poultrymen raising chickens with the wild-type color pattern (Black-Breasted Red, Light Brown, Silver Duckwing, etc.) have been able to tell the male chicks from the female chicks at hatch by down color. There are many instances when a chick’s down color can be used as a method for how to tell the sex of baby chicks. In any case, this method of how to tell the sex of baby chicks does work very well, but requires skill and training. The males have a round/globe-like center “bead” the females have a flat or concave center “bead.” Skilled vent sexers historically have had a 90% success ratio, with some modern reports claiming a success ratio of 95%. Essentially, the view reveals a shape much like a necklace with “beads” of different sizes, largest in the center. Warning: there are 18 different shapes possible with a two female and two male shapes that will appear as close matches for the opposite sex. Vent sexing is a procedure of holding the day-old chick in one hand, spreading open the vent, and viewing the copulatory organs to determine sex based on shape. It was the first reliable method of determining the sex of chicks and hatcheries use this method even today. ![]() From 1935 onward, this method of how to tell the sex of baby chicks was quickly adopted by large-scale poultry companies across North America. Kiyoshi Oxawa visited North America and taught the method in Queensland. In 1933, Professors Masui and Hashimoto published “Sexing Baby Chickens” in English. Vent Sexing was discovered by the Japanese in 1920 as a reliable and novel approach to determining the sex of day-old chickens. How to Sex Chicks: What Works? Vent Sexing
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