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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Sexing chickens
  • Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 08:11:47 -0700


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.






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