SEXING OF CHICKS

Grey River Argus, 15 February 1939, Page 10

SEXING OF CHICKS

COLOUR CROSS-BREEDING. The sexing of day-old chicks by the process discovered in Scotland and perfected by Japanese students, is now generally adopted on commercial poultry farms, especially on those where the lighter breeds of fowls are concentrated upon, and the cockerels are of little value for table purposes. Chick sexing has many advantages, i even where the heavy and dual-pur-pose breeds are kept, as it enables a 1 differentiation in feeding from the I earliest age, which is an advantage in securing maximum returns. Chicksexing is, however, not an economic ' proposition for the small poultry man with perhaps only a hundred or two birds. He must usually adopt other methods of detecting the sexes at the earliest possible age. One effective method which he may adopt is to cross-breed strains or breeds which have sex-linked characteristics of colour. Professor Punnet and colleagues at Cambridge discovered some years ago that.the hen transmits certain characters to her sons which she does not transmit to her daughters—that is, they are sex-linked. To use Professor Pennet’s own illustration:—

If a pure Light Sussex male (a breed belonging to the “silver” class) is mated to a Rhode Island Red female (“gold” class) all the progeny will be silver, but if the mating is reversed the pullet chicks will be gold-coloured in their down and the cockrels silver. Crosses which can be recommended for utility purposes, and which will produce this difference in colour between pullets andjgockjrel chicks fire: Rhode Island Red'and Light Sussex; Rhode Island Red and White Wyandotte; Brown Leghorn and Light Sussex. These will give good egg production as well as being good table birds. Other advantages of crossing such breeds as these are improved fertility and hatchability of the eggs, lower mortality during the rearing period and more rapid growth during the 'first twelve weeks. Generally, it is possible to detect the cockerels from the pullets in a batch of chickens at an early age by observing the following differences in developments:— Cockerels earlier develop more prominent head points, especially in the light breeds, and a coarser, leggier appearance generally. They are also more backward in feathering, which is particularly noticeable in the tail, and on the back

and wings. In some breeds of fowls the chicks feather more rapidly than in others. Rhode Island Reds, Rocks, Sussex and Wyandottes are of the slow-feather-ing type, while Leghorns and the Mediterranean breeds in general are of the rapid-feathering type. If a White Leghorn male is mated to Rhode Island Red females, the rate at which the wing quills push out in the newly-hatched chick enables the breeder to determine the sex In the pullets the growth of the wing-quills will be much more rapid than in the males.