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[Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>]

> > How does one sex chicks?
> >
> > Don Bowen
>
> There was a way of holding them upside down and the males would do 
> something different from the females... I don't recall the details and 
> even better I can't recall if it worked either ...
> I usually let time tell me.

I have four chicken books. None tell how to sex chicks. One says that 
sexing just-born chicks is "an arcane science" that is largely the domain 
of Japanese-Americans. Must be the eyes. It says they can sex a thousand 
chicks per hour and at one time were paid a penny per chick. Imagine doing 
that for eight or ten hours a day, weeks and months on end. The pay is 
insufficient to pay the price of a good psychiatrist who might help the 
chick sexer regain normalcy.

There is no reason I know to learn the science. If you buy from a hatchery, 
they have done the job and you can buy sexed or straight run. If you let a 
broody hen raise your own, my preference, you simply eat the ones you don't 
want to keep when they reach an appropriate size.