Why do we need another chicken blog or forum?


Many chicken forums are moderated to sell commercial feed, chemicals and ideology.
I prefer to find my own balance between nature, welfare and cost in raising happy chickens.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Some growing anconas...

UPDATE: Final result is 5 girls and 3 boys. Still not a bad ratio!
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Just a few ancona shots. Seems I have 5 or 6 girls and only 2 boys. One of the 'girls' is very faintly in doubt, but still that's a good ratio.

I only want to keep a boy or two, so the rest will be for sale. Hopefully they'll go to a nice home and become excellent layers for somebody.

You can see all these birds have a substantial comb for their age. That's an ancona trait: big combs. Later in the girls these combs will flop over. The big telltale sign for sexing at this age are the wattles.

The obvious boys do have fairly flared red combs, but also their wattles are quite large and dangly. None of the ones below have that, so I'm calling them girls.

Later (if it stops pouring) I'll go down and take some shots of the clear cockerels, for comparison.

All sexing is under 100% accurate, but the big combed birds I find a lot easier...



2 comments:

Clandestine Chickens said...

I am so excited to have found your blog! You have so many great ideas and resources that I am excited to implement with my girls. Thank you for the great tips!

Erica Bandanna said...

Thank you, Clandestine Chickens! I'm so glad you found the blog. Feel free to share any of your thoughts or impressions. :)