Rowan Tree Roost: Guessing Chick Breeds

This is Turtle, laying back and checking me out.

Good afternoon my chicken friends!

This new endeavor is to fill in the cracks of information that seem lacking for the small urban farmer/chicken owner. The internet is an amazing resource, however, I've found that with the recent burst of growth in city chicken farmers, there is a lot of information that is scattered around and some that is lacking. So this is my goal. I am starting to garden more, raise chickens, compost and I have some other fun pets. I plan to keep track and provide information right here, for anyone interested.

So, with that said, my first post will be about these amazing new baby chicks I inherited and I'm currently trying to figure out their breed and genders. I work in a college of agriculture and with someone who teaches a poultry class. Part of this class is learning about chick production and hatching eggs. However, as a result of learning this topic, there are chicks that hatch and need homes. This semester, I was the lucky person to get them and I set them up in a brooder at home.

BTW, I have a husband with the patience of a saint. Bless him.

There was no clue to breed or gender and I'm fairly novice on such things, so google it was. I made the immediate assumption that there were only three breeds, with three groups of color and I now believe I was wrong on that one.

I'm only two weeks in, but I believe I have four breeds. The yellow ones are growing white feathers and are the largest of the chicks. I believe they are leghorns. The brown ones are pretty clearly turning into Rhode Island Reds. Turtle is a wonder though, while he was still wobbly when we got him, he still - 2 weeks later - is smaller than all of the other chicks and seems to be growing more slowly. I sometimes wonder if he is a bantam. They were all hatched over two days, so even if he was the last one, he shouldn't so much smaller.

Gender has been an interesting thing to research. I find it depends on the breed and can be pretty easy or super difficult. I'll create another post on that topic.

Below are more pictures of the chicks up to 2 weeks old. I'll be posting more pictures over the next few weeks in a Part II blog post.

Where we are now: On the right is my Barred Rock roo and the left is a hen - 13 Days Old

10 day old Barred Rock and/or Australorp. This is when I realized I likely have different breeds within the black chicks.

Here they were when I first brought them home at 2-3 days old. There were 3 brown ones, 4 yellow and 5 that were mostly black. One of the brown ones was very wobbly and kept falling over on its back, so we named him Turtle.