# oil gland for sexing???



## hildar (Oct 3, 2013)

Why doesn't anyone ever use that for sexing their cockerels from their pullets?? Hens have them and so far in all of my years I have never found a rooster with one at that early age. I just looked at my 2 games and only 1 chick has it at the base of it's tail so I am saying pullet on that one. 2 weeks old and it's already there.


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## Fiere (Feb 26, 2014)

My meat birds are male and female, and are autosexed by wing feathers so blatantly obvious what's what, and the males have just as pronounced oil glands as the females. They will be two weeks on Monday. 

I never really took note of the oil glands in the birds, tbh, except in the broilers as their glands are large. I have sexed chicks this year and auto sexing breeds so I will have to go give a look see tomorrow and post my findings from my babies.


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## hildar (Oct 3, 2013)

Both of mine are games so when I could see one was way up there and the other one barely visible I had to wonder if it is a way to sex them??

We tried to sex them by colors. however I was told even that wont work. But from what I can tell the bigger one seems more like a girl then the smaller one. The smaller one is lighter like the rooster colors, where the bigger one is dark colored. The bigger one also has the oil gland up higher. As for wing feathers one is 1 day older and that is the darker one, and their wing feathers came in at about the same time.


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## Fiere (Feb 26, 2014)

Feather sexing (colour and growth) only works for birds who are bred for it, mind the hard feathers can be more telling than the down, so you may be right in the assumption? I looked at the glands on my chicks, they're hard to spot on the males and females of my heritage birds and of no real definitive size. The meat birds look like they have an extra tail they are so large, and no difference between males or females. Also on my mature birds here is no mark able difference between sexes.

These are feather growth sexed as hatchlings, and you can see the difference even though they're almost two weeks. This is a male:








This is a female:


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## piglett (Jun 21, 2012)

i have found that females feather out faster on my Orpingtons


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## Fiere (Feb 26, 2014)

They do indeed! My boy from the straight run grouping looks like the peep pictured above still, his female counterparts look like birds lol. I don't know of they can be wing sexed as day olds, though? Takes a couple weeks for me to really be able to take educated guesses on my Orps.


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## billybobaz (Feb 9, 2015)

My chickens are mutts, Two were suppose to be New Hampshire Reds and one was White, so I thought it was Leghorn until she laid a pale blue egg, and they were all bred to a (I think ) American Bantam roo. At least that is what he resembles most. No comb or pronounced wattles. Incubated those eggs plus some from a neighbor that has lots of variety of free running chickens so I have very little idea what breed is what. Is there some way to tell the hens from the roos when they are maybe 4 to 5 weeks old?


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