Date:  Fri Mar 5, 2004  9:48 pm
Subject:  Article on how to sex day old chicks....


Box after box of hatchlings (some but an hour old) are brought in
and placed before the chick sexer at waist level. Over and over he
scoops up a chick with his left hand, expels its droppings with a
squeeze of his thumb, opens its vent with his fingers, peers through
the magnifying tenses attached to his spectacles and determines its
sex. Then he deposits the tiny bird in one of two bins. Two thousand
vent sexes and a good day's work later, his hands and his shirt
front are still immaculate. And if you buy sexed chicks from this
chick sexer's employer, the sort is guaranteed 95% accurate.

In slow motion, here's how he separates those chicks.
There are three cardboard boxes on the table: one in front of him
(full of unsorted hatchlings) and the pullet and cockerel bins to
right and left. Each container is divided into four compartments to
buffer the shock of long-distance travel when the young birds are
shipped the next day. A milk carton, its top removed and two
adjoining sides cut down halfway, stands behind the "unsorted"
container with the low sides angled to face front.
With his left hand he scoops up a chick, catching-its neck between
his middle and ring fingers and its legs between his ring finger and
pinky. In one swoop the ball of fuzz is perfectly balanced and duck-
tailed rump up.

In chickens—as in other birds-the intestinal and genitourinary
tracts both empty into a common cavity known as the cloaca. Before
this area can be examined, the chick has to be evacuated (rid of the
blob of umbilical dinner that remains in its lower intestine). The
chick sexer holds the baby toward the milk carton and squeezes its
lower abdomen once with his left thumb. A small amount of feces
squirts into the container, and he finishes the job quickly before
another mess erupts.

The chick—still held in the same grasp—is raised close to the chick
sexer's face, and his left thumb presses the left edge of the vent
up and over so that the interior border is turned toward the bird's
neck and secured in that position. A fraction of a second later,
Scheline's right thumb and first finger spread apart the other half
of the orifice. The margin is folded down toward the abdomen and
held there with a firm pinch. The aperture is then fully open (wide
from back to belly, narrower thigh to thigh) and it's possible to
peer inside. Some sorters use the right index finger to test the
tissues for elasticity. Lyle, however, depends entirely on making a
visual check with his eyes.

Vent sexing is based on the fact that the hatchling cockerel has a
rudimentary sex organ called the "male process" . . . a very small,
glossy, transparent bulb that protrudes from amid the second of
three cloacal folds inside the cavity. The structure is independent
of the surrounding tissues and pokes out almost as far as the vent
opening when the border is pushed down far enough for examination.
If you're not farsighted, you can see the process with the naked
eye. In contrast, the typical female chick has a shallow depression—
or just a trace of swelling—at the same site.

So far, so good ... but here's the catch: One day-old cockerel out
of five isn't so distinctly characterized. He has a smaller bulb, a
flat bulb, a bulb that protrudes downward instead of up or a grooved
bulb that looks more like a fold than a male process.

More confusing still, 40% of day-old pullets have organs that
resemble those of the males. This happens because embryos of both
sexes start out with male-like bumps. In the majority of females,
the process begins to shrink by the second week of incubation and
has vanished by hatching time. Not so, however, with two pullets out
of rive. Their lingering protuberances are usually smaller than
cockerels', but are sometimes as large as the average male bulb.
As the female grows older, the process mill continue to
regress . . . just as the questionable male organ will extend and
grow larger. But you can't wait more than a day or two to vent sex a
chick. It has to be done before the youngster eats and thus distends
its lower alimentary tract.

Fortunately, the trained eye can still discern differences between
the true male process and the female protuberance at hatch. The
cockerel's organ (whether regular, small, flat or divided) consists
of compact, lustrous tissue that continues to hold its shape when
exposed. The female bulb-even a large one—is less conspicuous and
lacks sheen and elasticity. When the vent is spread apart and the
process revealed, the pullet's bump doesn't hold but fades away in
seconds. If the bulge is touched, it will depress.

Accordingly, when Lyle sees a shiny bulb-shaped process protrude to
the vent's lower edge and stay put, he plops the chick into the
cockerel bin. And if the same area bears a shallow depression, just
a trace of dull protuberance or a larger bulb that fades away, he
plunks the bird—with a somewhat wider smile—into the pullet
container. The occasional case he's unsure of goes back into the
unsorted box to be examined again later. The cloacal folds rearrange
in the meantime, and the process becomes easier to sex.

The chick sexer's large, blunt fingers and make-light-of-it modesty
belie the deftness and coordination necessary for his fast, decisive
skill. Undoubtedly, though, vent sexing does take a knack. The
sorter must be firm and gentle simultaneously: If the chick is held
too tightly, it will weaken and later die. Lyle knows sexers who
work a third again as fast as he does—employing a different hand
scoop—but their hatchlings don't always survive. Yet you can't be
too queasy about hurting the little birds, or you'll never get their
vents open far enough to expose the phallus and will end up trying
to make guesses about the upper cloacal folds.

Speed is important too. If you're not swift about completing the
check—or if you press down on the lower part of the abdomen as you
pinch back the right edge of the vent—another glob of feces will
erupt and coat the cavity. When that happens, you blot the area.
Nevertheless, I'd say that any nimble-fingered homesteader could
vent sex a good 75% of his day-old chicks, without an instructed
apprenticeship, just by knowing what to look for and how to spread
the aperture. (The other 25% of discriminations probably do take a
tutored eye.)

If you want to learn the art, it's best to put your fingers through
the motions of hand scoop and vent spread before you try to sex a
live bird. Dime stores carry little rubber replica chicks intended
as babies' bathtub toys. Buy one, magic-marker a small circle at the
appropriate place and practice.

As a novice chicken sexer myself, I find that the most difficult
manipulation of the technique is evacuation of the chick with the
left thumb. Only rarely do I find that exact spot on the lower belly
which relaxes the sphincter when pushed. What I do instead is sex my
hatchlings over a large laundry tub.

The problem is that if the chick isn't evacuated beforehand, the
feces seep into the cavity as you spread the vent apart. This isn't
the clean-cut eruption the thumb press effects: It drips, I
blot . . . it squirts, I blot . . . and again, until the aperture is
clean and I can peer in. This procedure takes more time and is
certainly messier, but it works. When I'm done, the toilet paper
goes in the wastepaper basket and I turn on the tub faucet and flush
the rest of the droppings down the drain.

THE DOWN COLOR SORT
Not all chicks have to be vent sexed: A variety of crossbreeds can
be sorted out by the color and markings of their down. In these
cases the juvenile coloring is a sex-linked characteristic . . .
that is, the pullets' coloration is determined by mania's gene, the
cockerels' by pa's. The most important factor to remember about
these pairings is that the method doesn't hold if the breeds of hen
and rooster are switched.

1. Gold breed roosters mated to silver and penciled breed hens
produce buff or red females and cream, white or smoky males. Either
sex may or may not show narrow striping.
Gold breed roosters include Rhode Island Reds and the buff varieties
of the following breeds: Leghorn, Minorca, Wyandotte, Plymouth Rock
and Cochin.

Silver and penciled hens include; White Wyandotte, Columbian
Wyandotte, Silver-laced Wyandotte, Silver-penciled Wyandotte,
Columbian Plymouth Rock, Silver-penciled Plymouth Rock, Light
Sussex, Light Brahma and Dark Brahma.

In addition, Brown Leghorn, Partridge Wyandotte, Partridge Plymouth
Rock and Golden-laced Wyandotte roosters can be crossed with
Columbian Wyandotte, Columbian Plymouth Rock, Light Sussex and Light
Brahma hens to produce chicks with the same sex-linked distinctions.

2. Barred Rock hens crossed with any brown-head rooster, or with any
black or buff variety, produce black males with white head spots and
yellow beaks, shanks and toes. The female chicks are all black above
with dark beaks, shanks and toes. The same offspring results from
the crossing of a Barred Rock hen and any recessive white rooster—
White Wyandotte, Langshan, Minorca or Dorking—with the exception of
the recessive White Plymouth Rock.

Incidentally, three "pure" or standard breeds produce chicks that
can sometimes be sorted on the basis of their down markings. One of
these is the Barred Rock . . . hatchlings with yellow head spots are
males. Both sexes of New Hampshire and Buff Orpington chicks
generally hatch totally buff. Some, however, have a black head spot
and are pullets. Others may have off-white streaks through the buff
down at the upper wing joints (shoulders), and these are cockerels.
The male marking is more common than the female, but is also more
difficult to detect.

Before the professional chick sexer overhauls a box of buffs,
he "sight-sexes" them quickly for markings. The darkest buff chicks
tend to be males, but—since that isn't always true—each hatchling of
that color goes through the vent check.


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tenzicut - who has never tried this..... yet!