Hen or Rooster? How to tell the difference.
Is your chicken a hen or a rooster? In this episode, we break down the key differences between a hen and a rooster, covering everything from physical characteristics to behavior and crowing. Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced poultry keeper, this guide will help you determine if your bird is a rooster or a hen!
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Jennifer: 0:01
Welcome poultry enthusiasts to another exciting episode of the Poultry Nerds Podcast.
Carey: 0:07
Whether you're raising backyard chickens, diving deep into the science of avian health, or you're just obsessed with all things feathers and eggs, you're in the right place. I'm Kerry.
Jennifer: 0:19
And I'm Jennifer. We're your hosts. And today we've got an episode packed with everything you need to know. About, is it a hen or a rooster?
Carey: 0:29
From expert tips, fascinating facts, we're here to help you become the ultimate poultry pro. It's time to get nerdy about poultry. Today's episode is brought to you by Purely Poultry. Ready to grow your flock? Purely Poultry offers a huge selection of birds, chicks, waterfowl, turkeys, guineas, and even hatching eggs. Ship safely to your local post office. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned poultry keeper, find exactly what you'll need at purelypoultry. com. Welcome. Today, we're gonna talk about how to figure out if it's a hen or a rooster.
Jennifer: 1:18
If you're just watching Facebook and all you gotta do is look at those wing feathers. It tells you everything you need to know on every single chick that exists. So this is the shortest podcast in history.
Carey: 1:30
Or no, look, So I have this guy. He says, Hey, do you mind if I pick the chicks up? I said how many are you on? And he said I'm gonna get five or six of them, but I want to make sure I only get one rooster. And I was like, okay. And so he picks one up, grabs it by the feet, holds it upside down. And I'm like, what are you doing? And he goes, Oh if they try to get back up, they're a rooster. If they just lay there, they're a hen. I was like, oh, okay.
Jennifer: 2:06
On their backs?
Carey: 2:08
Yeah, like he would hold the feet with a head dangling. I've had.
Jennifer: 2:13
And
Carey: 2:13
he said if they try to turn back up. But then they're a rooster, but if they just lay there, they're a hen.
Jennifer: 2:22
I had somebody get some turkey pulps from me one time, and she said that if you hold them in your hand and you let their legs dangle, if they tried to pull their legs back up, it was a male, and if they let their legs dangle, it was a female.
Carey: 2:39
Okay. And look, so with the other thing, like I actually Googled it cause you know me, I'm on Google stuff to check it out. And. That's a common thing for people to think that's the case. And there's some people that have said it's about accurate half the time, which I would think anything would be half the time when you have 2 options
Jennifer: 3:05
about the same as the shape of the egg, or if you put it in the refrigerator or not, we really got to start doing the video just because of the expressions on your face.
Carey: 3:14
But no, but you're right, like I've had people order hatching eggs and they're like, can I have ones that are more rounded than pointy? Because I've heard pointy ones are this and rounded ones are this, and I would like to have more hens. And I'm like I just, I want to say, I'm very confident that a scientist has studied that. If there was some science to it, hatchery folks would be rich.
Jennifer: 3:45
And they wouldn't be ticking off all of the animal rights peaceful by the grinding of all of the male chicks that supposedly happen.
Carey: 3:56
Yeah and I'll just tell y'all. People don't do that. They sell those roosters too. Yeah, and they don't sell them a lot cheaper either. But hey, stick around as we break down the key differences between hens and roosters, covering everything from physical traits to the way they act.
Jennifer: 4:17
One of the easiest ways to tell the difference between a hen and a rooster is by looking at their physical traits.
Carey: 4:24
Look, let's start with a comb and waddles. A rooster will typically have a much larger and redder comb and waddles compared to a hen. That is a dead giveaway.
Jennifer: 4:38
Yes.
Carey: 4:38
They want to. Get chicks and figure it out. And now there are some that you can hail after a week or two, but unless you're using some kind of sex link trait.
Jennifer: 4:55
I think a pullet's waddles and hen don't they, waddles and comb, don't they stay a little bit pinker? A rooster will get redder faster.
Carey: 5:04
I know that with the American breasts that I have, the Rhode Island reds that I have, and the game birds that I have, with those, that is true, The comb will be more of a dark red on the ones that typically grow up to be the males and the waddles. On the females, they'll be more of a pink color, but I'm not 100 percent positive that's the case for all.
Jennifer: 5:40
No, the orpingtons that I have, they'll stay pink, but the breasts, I was looking at them today because I am like anxious for them to start laying eggs, and all of their combs and wattles are red, and they haven't laid the first egg yet. So I do think it's somewhat breed dependent.
Carey: 5:58
And I've seen yours and you, if you're judging on the size of the Coleman wattles, your roosters are very obviously roosters, but what about like a Chanticleer, they don't really have Coleman wattles or bred that way from Canada. So I I wonder what that does.
Jennifer: 6:22
You're going to have to go by their more muscular legs.
Carey: 6:26
I was going to say body size, maybe. Tail
Jennifer: 6:29
feathers.
Carey: 6:31
Yeah. Tail feathers. They'll typically be more developed on the roosters because they like to be all bougie and stuff like that. I will say a lot of people also will look for spurs. But even that's not 100 percent because I have seen rare instances where some breeds of chickens, the hens have spurs too. I
Jennifer: 6:56
think for the most part, you're going to be looking at their hackle feathers and their sickle feathers. If, we're talking about a little bit older birds. But even
Carey: 7:07
then, you got to know what the bird is.
Jennifer: 7:11
Yeah,
Carey: 7:12
because I would think some would be different.
Jennifer: 7:16
Let's talk about behavior.
Carey: 7:18
Can say one of the biggest giveaways about four months down the road is going to go with. Number one, who's crowing, but even then, some people will swear that they have hens crowing. I would say until you see somebody on somebody else's back.
Jennifer: 7:43
Or an egg.
Carey: 7:44
Or an egg. And that's, that all goes to being a good poultry nerd, and knowing your flock, and knowing their characteristics. Yeah. Because a lot of this stuff does vary. Based on breeds. You've also can tell by aggression levels, but let's be honest, most breeders don't keep aggressive anything, they'll get rid of it because they don't want aggression in their flock. So
Jennifer: 8:21
the good thing.
Carey: 8:23
Yeah. I have seen aggressive pullets.
Jennifer: 8:28
You want to hear a funny story?
Carey: 8:30
Of course.
Jennifer: 8:32
We were having to downsize all the birds when we moved out here. Because we moved from about an hour away. And we went out there one day. And we harvested all of the males. I was only going to bring the hens with us. So I harvested all of them. Go to bed, get woken up the next morning by a crowing rooster.
Carey: 8:56
Cock a doodle doo.
Jennifer: 8:58
So I go out there and I'm looking and he's just standing there looking at me. And that bird was a hen for like close to a year. And I kept, I, I would have sworn, I would have lost money on a bet that was a hen and overnight because there was no competition, he turned into a rooster and he was a lemon cuckoo, Orpington, absolutely beautiful bird and we called him FDR. After that. We kept him for several years. But we called him FDR, Faux de Rooster.
Carey: 9:40
So you're like, finally I'm in charge.
Jennifer: 9:43
He was huge too. Like he was the size of a hen the night before. And the next morning he was like four pounds heavier. And he had a comb and he was crowing. And I am not making this up.
Carey: 9:54
I
Jennifer: 9:58
mean, he was in charge.
Carey: 10:00
That is crazy.
Jennifer: 10:02
Yep. So yeah. Yeah. So it happens even to the best of
Carey: 10:07
us. Hiding it pretty well.
Jennifer: 10:12
Yep. So why does it matter if you have a hen or a rooster?
Carey: 10:16
So I got to say this, there's a large number of people. And this is why I love a certain backyard group because I like entertainment and I find some stuff comical. But there's some people that only want eggs and those of us that know that they don't need a rooster. They can have a hen and just have eggs. I have, I'm outside the city, but I have a lot of customers that will come to me from the city to buy a small coop because, this time of year, everybody wants to be a homesteader and they want to save the biggest jokes. They want to save money on eggs. And they're like, they want to get some hens and I'm like, okay, here you go. Here's your little coop. And, they're going to raise chickens. I love it.
Jennifer: 11:16
It's
Carey: 11:16
like in the city, if I'm right outside of Birmingham, but if you're like in the Hoover area. or the Vestavia area, you're allowed to have up to six hens, but you cannot have a rooster per city code. So that would be one reason with the legal restrictions, noise complaints, or whatever.
Jennifer: 11:41
If you're not going to breed, you just want eggs. You don't need one either. No. And if you have too many of them, they're going to fight with each other for dominance. Unless you get a really submissive one, like FDR.
Carey: 11:57
Like I have a coop that is a 10 foot by 12 foot. I have three roosters in there. And about 18 to 20 hens, and it's a tractor, it gets moved very often. And people are like, those roosters are huge, you don't have aggression problems? I'm like, no. The aggression problems have long been in a crock pot or something. Then that. Like the, these, I went down there one night to go check on'em, and two of the roosters were actually on a pole roos to side by side. Like they were homies. So it is possible for them to get along. But I would also venture to say that if I had three roosters and three hens. Or two hens. They may not get along as well.
Jennifer: 12:52
No, they're not going to. You need to, that's where culling comes in.
Carey: 12:58
That's where not having too many chickens comes in handy. Because some people
Jennifer: 13:05
I do not understand what you're saying.
Carey: 13:08
Okay, we don't see the thing, but I had a conversation with a lady the other night about feed and she looks at feed the same way I do, but she was helping people find a feed that was like 2 off, which made it 10. 99 a bag, which, okay, for somebody. That has way too many birds and figuring out how to feed their birds is a problem, then I could see that. But here's the thing, just don't have too many birds.
Jennifer: 13:45
I don't understand what you're saying.
Carey: 13:48
But you feed your birds really good feed.
Jennifer: 13:50
I do feed my birds really good feed.
Carey: 13:52
Yeah.
Jennifer: 13:54
Yeah, overcrowding is a problem. I'm just kidding.
Carey: 13:58
Can a hen ever turn into a rooster? I know the situation that you had, but
Jennifer: 14:07
it's actually a yes, it is possible that's a story for another podcast, though, because you put that in there and you weren't expecting that answer.
Carey: 14:20
Okay, but are you talking about componing? Nope. Oh, okay.
Jennifer: 14:26
Nope.
Carey: 14:28
I, they do that surgery on people, I guess they can do it on chickens too.
Jennifer: 14:33
Yep. You're sorry your ass now, aren't you? We'll do that on another podcast. Yeah, that's for, that's
Carey: 14:38
a but people, for the biggest part, there may be some truth to a lot of the things that you see on internet. If you look at the wing and it makes a B, is it one or is it straight, is it another? For some breeds, some of those things are true, but you need to know that it's not a one and done thing.
Jennifer: 15:05
So that image that floats around Facebook this time of year. Where the, some of the feathers are shorter, like every other feather is shorter, and then every other feather is longer. So they think that, okay, you look at the wing, and then you can tell. That picture was actually part of a very long article that I can post on the website for reference. But that is only accurate on certain breeds, and they have to be a fast feathering breed. Yeah. So it's not really accurate for most people at all.
Carey: 15:38
That's what a grow out pin is for, right? As a chicken person, you just throw them all in the grow out because you got to wait and find out what they are and it's a good excuse to have more.
Jennifer: 15:53
If you want to know when they're chicks, then you really need to know your birds. And if you just bought the chicks at the box bin store or whatever, then you're not gonna know. But like my Orpingtons, the girls will get their tail feathers earlier than the boys. But then by, I don't know, four or five weeks, you can't tell anymore. They're caught up to each other.
Carey: 16:19
Right.
Jennifer: 16:20
So, you just got to know your birds and, or be patient.
Carey: 16:26
And I'll say this, I've seen a lot of people posting, hey, does anybody know where a certain store that starts with a tractor Has pullets, because a lot of places do advertise that they sell just pullets. I've also heard of people buying a bunch of said pullets and getting about half a brooder full of roosters.
Jennifer: 16:54
If you have the sex linked chickens, then you could guarantee bullets. Yes. And we did a show on that. And, so you could go back and reference that show. Auto sexing or sex linked.
Carey: 17:07
Yeah. That was actually a pretty good show. I learned about a couple of different things that could be sex linked that I didn't think about. If you want to make a link and find out. You can do that.
Jennifer: 17:21
That we didn't mention on the chicks, if you watch their behavior a male will stand up right a little bit more and a female's back will be more horizontal.
Carey: 17:35
Like when you look at breed standards the rooster stands up more and, but the females, like on a Rhode Island Red, if you look at their back, It should essentially be a brick with feathers going this way and a head up this way. That's a wrap for today's episode. If you learned something new, give us a a subscribe, share, and leave us a review. And as always, happy chicken keeping.
