Chicks and growth
Growth, sexing, weaning, moving outdoors: Elsanor's answers on chicks and raising pullets to adulthood.
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It depends on the method and on the breed. At the hatchery some breeds can be sexed from day one: by vent sexing, by wing feathering, or by down colour where the genetics allow it — which is the case for several of our breeds. Each breed page states the method we use. Otherwise you have to wait: the first signs appear at around 6 to 10 weeks, and certainty often comes much later, with crowing or with the first egg.
The signs come gradually. In a young cockerel the comb and wattles redden and grow sooner, the carriage becomes more upright, the hackle and saddle feathers lengthen and narrow, and the spurs begin to show. In a pullet everything stays rounder and less pronounced. Be wary of hasty verdicts at around eight weeks: in slow-maturing breeds people get it wrong more often than not.
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Allow roughly five to eight months depending on the breed and rearing conditions, with bantams the quickest. One important point: a hen starts laying before she has reached her final frame, and she keeps gaining weight as she ages. That is precisely why a large fowl shown too early always looks short of what it will become.
A bantam completes its growth appreciably sooner and comes into lay earlier; a large fowl must first build a far bigger frame and more muscle, which means several extra weeks of rearing before the first egg. That delay does not, however, explain the price difference between breeds: that comes from the breeding work and the rarity, not from the amount of feed eaten. Our smallest formats — Combattant anglais moderne nain, Naine hollandaise, Sebright — are the quickest to finish growing.
It depends on the outside temperature, on predators, on the other animals around and on the setting — far more than on any theoretical age. Supervised outdoor access can be considered from three or four weeks if the weather allows, but to let them out properly it is better to wait two months: by then they are no longer chicks but pullets. The reliable marker remains feathering: as long as there is still down on the back and neck, a heat source is needed.
She sees to it herself: she stops covering them, pushes them away and takes her place back in the flock — all the sooner if she has many chicks to raise. From eight weeks you can also separate them yourself, except in very cold weather. Worth knowing: with proper equipment, chicks do not need a broody hen to grow on well.
There is no official date. In common usage a bird is a chick until it is fully feathered, a pullet after that, and a hen from the first egg onwards. The word matters less than the stage: what really changes is the need for heat, which disappears, and then the move to a less rich feed.
With care. A few days apart is no problem at all; two or three weeks changes everything: the bigger ones monopolise the heat and the feed, and the smaller ones fall behind. If you must mix them, do it as early as possible, check that all of them are feeding, and provide several feeding points.
From hatch to first egg our records give 19 weeks for our earliest breeds and 24 for the latest, that is four to six months. Over that period a purebred pullet eats much the same as an ordinary one: it is therefore not the feed that sets the price of a purebred hen. What sets it is what lies behind the bird — generations of selection, a breeding flock kept all year round, and a strict cull that discards a great deal to keep only the best.
Yes, and it is common practice: a broody hen will generally accept eggs or chicks slipped under her, especially after dark. The breeds we rate as excellent sitters, namely Galinha sedosa barbuda, Galinha sedosa de cabeça branca, Pekin, regularly serve as foster mothers. The usual precaution: introduce all the chicks at once, and preferably in the evening.
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