Keeping chicken can be simple and manageable no matter where you are. It is advisable to research the different breeds of chickens first. It depends on the location and the main purpose of keeping the chicken. Once you’ve decided on the breed, you need to do a little homework before bringing the chickens home.
The first step is figuring out how many chickens you want and this will determine most of the subsequent activities you do. It is advisable to start with a small number of chickens for those who are just starting to make it easier and faster for them to acquire the ability to raise chickens. Most people prefer to have more chickens than roosters due to the noisy nature of a rooster. However, keep in mind that it is not necessary to have a rooster for the hens to produce eggs, unless you need the hens to produce fertile eggs, of course.
A good chicken coop goes a long way to maintaining the health, comfort and productivity of your chickens. Good chicken coop models can be found on the Internet and used to make a chicken coop. The house should be made of good materials so that you do not have to repair it frequently. Other factors to consider are that the hen house should be spacious enough for the chicken to move around, as hens in crowded areas lay fewer eggs than in spacious areas, it should be well lit and ventilated, and the henhouse. the floor must have a mesh. about a foot below the ground to protect the chicken from predators such as snakes and raccoons while allowing worms access to food. Other considerations are that the chicken coop should be covered with grass or sawdust to provide a kind of dust park for the chicken, it should have a water dispenser and a food container for the chicken, and it should have nests where the chickens can lay their eggs. and rest.
If you plan to have a large number of chickens, it is advisable to buy chicken feed before bringing the chicken home. Food scraps can contain a very small bird size. However, raw potatoes and avocado can be harmful to chicken.
Since you have already decided which breed of chicken to keep, your only task is to buy the chicken. You can buy day-old chicks or chickens older than 12 weeks from a farm or hatchery. When you bring them home, leave them in the henhouse for a while to familiarize yourself with your facilities.
It is important to keep the chicken coop clean. It should be cleaned every 1 to 2 weeks to keep the hens comfortable. Be sure to monitor chickens to ensure that their health and eating habits are satisfactory. Make sure there is always someone to keep an eye on the chicken in case it is not available. Having a healthy, well-fed chicken will give you the extraordinary spoils of owning a chicken.
Methods on How to Sex Chicken
1. Chicken Comb Colours and Sizes.
Determining the chicken sex by looking at their comb is a simple method of determining the sex of a chick. This is a straight method because you can see the colour and size of the wattle and make a very fair judgment.
This technique will work best when you have chicks of a similar bleed. This method will be more challenging with mixed bleeds.
For instance, when you mixed a box of single crossed rock with a Rose Brushed Dominiques, you can try to observe and see the differences.
Roosters will have more articulated comb than a hen, even if they are young. The comb is slightly higher and sometimes has all the characteristics that it is fuller than a chicken comb.
Also, the colour of the comb will look lighter as they get older. This is an unlikely deciding factor when the chicken is between the age of one month to two months old.
2. Venting
Without a doubt, the most reliable method of determining the sex of a chick is by observing the vent of the chicken.
It is a simple process that needs knowledge and the ability to purposefully manage the chick without hurting them. Venting is the best method used by most farmers before moving the chicks. They put aside their efforts to recruit capable, experienced and incredibly perfect chicks. However, even the best incubation facilities, with the best sexers, this does not guarantee you 100% accuracy.
Although venting is one of the most reliable approaches to determine the sex of chicken, without enough experience, this procedure can be just as challenging as observing a brooder full of chicks. It is also not for the weak, as it includes squeezing the chick until the faeces are removed and its internal parts can be seen. When the internal parts are visible, a small bulb will be noticeable inside the cloaca if the chick is a male. Sometimes even with the most experienced person, they can lose this little bulb, therefore long periods of training will surely be needed to master this strategy.
3. Feather Sexing
This is another simple way to determine the sex of chicks. Females chicks will have wing feathers before they hatch. The young roosters will not begin to grow feathers on their wings until a few days after they hatch.
It is always desirable to look for wingtips when moving chicks from the incubator to brooder because roosters will start to grow wing feathers.
To observe the wing feathers, spread the chick’s small wings and look for any signs of improvement in the wing feathers. The tips of a female chick wing will not only be more obvious, but they will also have a variety of lengths. The tips of a rooster’s wings have the characteristics that they are equal in length, starting with one feather and then the next. It is very likely that if the wing feathers are available and very different, the chick will be a happy hen at some point.
4. Vocalizations
Although some people swear that chickens can sing, it can be a determining factor in the sex of chickens. If all else fails while the chicks are in the incubator, a crow will tick the tick within a few months. A rooster starts crowing about 4 to 5 months old. At this point, they probably already look like a rooster, so it would not be too surprised if they start crowing.
An important observation you can make if you have more than one rooster together is that the rooster on top tends to grow faster and crows earlier than those at the bottom of the pick order. It’s almost as if her growth has been slowed down a bit by the alpha rooster.
5. Behaviour
If have the advantage of taking some good time to determine the sex of your chicks, one can decide to base the sex of your chicks on their behaviour in the incubator.
For instance, the young rooster may behave more dominant by chasing after your hand rather than hiding in a corner like young hens. Just from the egg, some roosters will demonstrate their ability to conquer and secure their hens by blowing up and showing who the boss is.
The rooster regularly “wraps” its feathers and stands up as they examine the eyes of another young rooster. You have often seen two seers act as if they were only seven days old.
Young roosters are often the first to run to the food bowl and make noises to warn the rest of the babies about the tasty finds. It is behaviour they carry with them for life. Roosters take their job of caring for their chickens very seriously and it is interesting to note that they have instinct at such a young age.
As roosters develop and age, it becomes easier to observe signs of a rooster’s behaviour, but even as chicks, these gestures are quite telling.
6. Colours down
If you know in advance what the sex of my chicks is, you can make sure you order Sex Link chicks from your favourite chicken brood. The sex of these types of chicks can be determined simply by considering the colour of their feathers. It is important to note that the only time a chick can be slaughtered with this method is if the parents were not from the same chicken breed.
How Not to Tell the Sex of a Chicken
These are the old methods to determine if your chick is a rooster or a hen. These methods are not scientifically proven and mostly do not work.
1. Candling of Eggs
Egg Candling is the process of determining the fertility of an egg. Even if the egg is fertile, the sex of the hen cannot be determined. By examining the eggs, you can only determine whether the egg is fertile.
2. The Egg Shape
It was once thought that a narrow and long egg to be a male chick, and a rounder egg to be a female chick. The shape of the egg is not linked to the sex of the chicken.