Chicks

Pullet or Cockerel? How to Tell Hens from Roosters by Age

Field guide · Updated November 2, 2026 · about 8 min read

Straight-run chicks are sold unsexed, and even sexed chicks come with a margin of error: McMurray Hatchery guarantees 90% accuracy on all sexed poultry, and Valley Hatchery guarantees 90% for most breeds. Telling a pullet (young female) from a cockerel (young male) gets easier with every week. This guide sets out which signs show at which age, from down color at hatch to spurs at almost a year, and how reliable each one is according to the sources listed at the bottom.

Signs by age at a glance

At hatch: chicks you can sex by color

Birds reverse the mammal system: males are ZZ and females ZW, and the genes for barring, silver versus gold and feathering speed sit on the Z chromosome (University of Kentucky; Poultry Extension). Two kinds of chicks use this:

• Sex-links are first-generation crosses of a rooster of one breed over hens of another. The parent breeds, chick colors and why the reverse cross fails are on the sex-link chickens page. Their offspring will not breed true (Kentucky).
• Autosexing breeds are purebreds whose chicks can be sexed by the color and markings of the down. Reginald Punnett and Michael Pease at Cambridge made the first, the Cambar, in 1928, and the Legbar about ten years later (Wikipedia). Oklahoma State describes Cream Legbar males as a lighter brown with a small bleached spot on the head and females as a deeper shade with stripes along the back. The Poultry Club of Great Britain notes the first Cream Legbars were crestless and laid white eggs; blue eggs came later from Araucana crosses.

Wikipedia's chick sexing article adds that Rhode Island Red and New Hampshire chicks with chipmunk stripes are almost always female.

Feather sexing in the first three days

Feather sexing works only in strains bred for it; Mississippi State notes that most breeds lack the trait and both sexes look identical. In a feather-sexable cross (a fast-feathering male over slow-feathering females), the sons are slow-feathering and the daughters fast-feathering (Poultry Extension).

1. Check the age. The difference in length between the primary and covert wing feathers shows between one and three days after hatch; after that this cross cannot be used for sexing (Poultry Extension).
2. Spread one wing gently and find the long primary feathers along the edge and the covert feathers lying over them.
3. Primaries clearly longer than the coverts: pullet.
4. Coverts as long as or longer than the primaries: cockerel.
5. Not sure, or not a feather-sexable cross? Wait for the growing-bird signs from 4–6 weeks.

From 4 weeks: signs in growing birds

At hatch, males and females weigh the same (Poultry Extension). Mississippi State says the secondary sex characteristics can usually be used from 4 to 6 weeks; Wikipedia gives the same range for small farmers without a professional sexer.

Breeds that break the rules

• Sebright and Campine: the males are "hen-feathered," so feather shape does not help (Poultry Extension; eXtension). For Sebrights, My Pet Chicken says comb and wattle size are about the only easy way to tell.
• Silkie: sexing is difficult because the feathers lack barbs (Poultry Extension). My Pet Chicken lists long streamers in the male's crest, a larger comb and, in non-bearded birds, larger wattles.
• Pea-comb and other small-comb breeds: small combs make comb-based sexing harder (Poultry Extension).

Where the sources differ

• Combs. Poultry Extension and Mississippi State treat larger combs and wattles as a main early sign; My Pet Chicken calls comb size and redness one indicator but "not usually reliable."
• Crowing. eXtension says males crow and females do not. My Pet Chicken says hens can crow too, gives 4–5 months as typical for roosters, and reports starts as early as 2 months and as late as 8–9 months.
• Spurs. eXtension lists large spurs as a male trait; Doherty et al. (2021) report that females occasionally develop spurs that reach the same shape and grow at a comparable rate.
• Autosexing history. Wikipedia's auto-sexing article dates the California Grey to the 1930s in Modesto; its chick sexing article credits the California Gray to Dryden Farms in the 1950s.

Methods that do not work

Poultry Extension: egg shape does not show the sex of the chick, the string-and-needle test is unreliable, and these folk methods are right about "fifty-fifty." Candling cannot show the sex of an embryo either. Vent sexing works but takes extensive training; Poultry Extension notes there are very few schools that still teach it.

Checklist: hen or rooster?

1. Write down the hatch date and compare the bird with the age table above.
2. Know the chick type. Sex-link or autosexing chicks can be sorted at hatch; straight-run chicks cannot, and McMurray does not guarantee an equal number of males and females in a straight-run order.
3. Use several signs together: comb and wattles, then hackle and saddle feathers, then crowing. Names of the feather tracts are on the chicken anatomy page; terms such as straight run and sexed are in the glossary.
4. Allow for the hatchery margin. A 90% guarantee means an occasional cockerel among sexed pullets.
5. Check rooster rules for your address before the crowing starts; see how to check local chicken rules.
6. Keep raising them the same way until you are sure; brooder care is in chick care for the first 8 weeks.