so i got me 4 chicks and they are about a month old, how do i tell if they are male or female?

thanks,

noah

They will need to grow a bit then they will get spurs (females get them sometimes) after the 1st crowing you will know!

You need to wait till you see wee signs of a comb on their head. Thats what I look for. Its usually larger than the pullets.

Young birds can be hard to sex. As they age, the hackle and saddle feathers of the males will get pointier and longer. The spurs on the males will grow much quicker. If they are a combed breed, the combs will be larger and brighter colored on the males. The wattles will be brighter colored on the males too. Overall, the males will have blockier and larger heads. The pelvic spacing on the hens will usually be wider than on the males too.

Keith

Sexing chicks is a skill which the hatcheries employ experienced workers for, which involves things which would kill most chicks in inexperienced hands. You can try something though if you have a skill for it in it is called dowsing.
Get needle and thread, push the needle into a pencil with an eraser. Wrap the string around your finger and then hold the chick, put the pencil over the chick, and wait for the pencil to swing either in a circle or straight line. Circle means female, male is the straight line. It will vibrate after it swings.
This is an old method, and you can read about it in people even used it for sexing eggs to be hatched. Our neighbor used to do this on guineas all the time.

And in some flocks (if all hens) one will sometimes take on the roll of a rooster. I've had hens crow before. Well it's not like a rooster but they try, I guess. I've been fooled into thinking a juvenile bird was a rooster when it was just the dominant hen. It's usually fairly short lived and/or sporadic, though.

A Rooster is always the one on top and if it's a hen it's on the bottom. Hope this helps.

Can vent sex new chicks on first day only after that you wait. At 5-6 months the hackles and spurs will be a fair indication, after 8-12 months or so the ones laying eggs are hens.
I have seen wide variety of comb and wattle development even within a breed and the same hatch group, so I don't count that as any more than a 50/50 guess. Within a breed the cockerels will usually have longer legs and bigger heads, again a guess.

Look for signs of an eye patch

Hens- eggs
Rooster- no eggs

What breed do you have? We have leghorn and easter eggers that are 6 weeks that I have a pretty good idea which ones are going to be roosters and which will be hens.

You can always pick them up & shake them. Those that rattle are roosters.

Hens, the ones that just wont shut up.

Just saw on "how its made" or some program a few days ago they were showing chicks being sexed at a commercial hatchery. They were only looking at the two rows of emerging wing feathers. If they were even they were one sex, if they were uneven, the other sex. They were sexing those chicks about 10 times as fast as the old vent inspection way. But they didn't say how accurate they were.
It would help if I could remember what sex a chick with even wing feathers were, wouldn't it?

Hens have longer eyelashes

This is going to sound silly but I have used it for years with great success and the old timer that showed it to me has used it for 40 some odd years. Tie a loop of string through a nut or a washer, hold the string over the top of the chicks head ( try to get it within 1" at least),... so here comes the part where most people think I have lost my mind. Keep the string perfectly still when you lower it over the chick, if its a female the nut/washer will move in small circles. If its a male it will move in a straight line back an forth. I will say that for some people the movement will be greater than in others, my wife can barely see hers move and mine move in big exaggerated motions.

If you don't think this is true, try holding it over your spouse or your pet and see if you don't get the results I predicted. Hope this helps, PM me if it works for you.

This

If you could post a pic it would help a lot. Ive raised quite a few chickens. It would be good to know the breed also.

That only works on specific breeds and it has to be done within about 4 days of hatching to be accurate.

Why I'd just give em something to drink then take em to the bathroom and see which sit and which stand when they go.

Osky