Is Your Chicken a Hen or a Rooster? Avoid the Myths & Crack the Code!

I think every chicken owner has squinted at their chicken trying to figure out “Are you a hen or a rooster?”. Let’s talk about some of the ways to sex your chicken and debunk a few myths too!

Chicken myths...

There are a lot of myths out there on how to sex your chicks, let’s get those out of the way first. Dangling your chicks upside down to see if they fight or submit is not accurate. It doesn’t work and it’s not safe for your chicks. I have seen people say if you ‘thump’ your chick on the back, the noise they make determines the sex. That is also not rooted in any scientific evidence.

A lot of people will tell you that you can sex your chicks by their wing shape. This is only true for very few breeds. It is not best to rely on this method as it is almost always incorrect.

How to tell...

Everyone wants to know when they buy or hatch their little chicks what sex they are. Chicks from hatcheries are often sold as pullets or straight run. Pullets will be your hens and straight run means a mixture of pullets and cockerels (a young rooster). Even if you buy pullets from a hatchery, it isn’t always a 100%. There is some room for human error so you may still end up with a roo!

Hatcheries sex their chicks by vent sexing and they have trained professionals who do this. It is dangerous to do yourself and can injure or kill your chick. This is the only way to accurately sex freshly hatched chicks besides autosexing breeds.

So let’s talk autosexing breeds! If you want to be able to tell what sex your chicks are at hatch, autosexing breeds are great. Autosexing means the pullets are born with different colors or markings on their down than cockerels.

Some popular autosexing breeds include:

• Barred Rock

• Legbar

• Welsummer

• Rhode Island Red

By a few weeks old you may notice some of your chicks have much bigger and redder combs than the others and their legs may be a lot thicker too. This is a good indication you may have a few cockerels on your hands! But some breeds naturally get larger combs sooner than others, like leghorns for example. I looked at some of my pullets and thought “well, I think I got sold all cockerels!”. Nope, they’re laying me eggs today. So while it can be a good indicator, it’s not always true.

Now let’s talk about when you have thirty juvenile or grown chickens running around and you’re hearing crowing but you can’t pinpoint the culprit. Or you can’t tell if your favorite chicken is going to lay you eggs or give you a little cockadoodledoo.

One of the easiest ways is to look at their hackle and saddle feathers. Hackle feathers are found around the neck and saddle feathers are found right before the base of the tail. Roosters will have pointy feathers that end in a V and hens will have more round oval that end in a U.

If you look at the photos you can see the difference between the pointy and round hackle feathers. The saddle feathers on roosters often are longer and droop down more, looking more like a ‘saddle’.

You can also look at the comb and waddles but keep in mind some breeds the hens will have larger combs. A large comb is not always a good way to tell the sex of your chicken.

And all in all, of course the easiest way to tell is to wait for your chicken to crow or lay an egg! And whether you have hens or roosters, mealworms by Hatortempt are a tasty and healthy treat for them. Black Soldier Fly Larvae by Hatortempt is especially good if you luck out and have a lot of hens, because it is higher in calcium than mealworms and makes for strong egg shells!