How to teach yourself to sex day old chickens from this book:

Equipment

1 * 150 watt globe (pearl)
Suitable 'lamp' shade (refer to p.160, 'The Specialist chick sexer')

It is assumed that you are familiar with handling day old chicks

The books covers only the theory of chick sexing of day old chicks, it is necessary to have instruction (and practice on many millions of day old chicks) by an experienced chick sexer to achieve an acceptable commercial accuracy of 98% or better.

With 100 chicks you would expect to get 50 cockerels and 50 pullets. A self taught person should be able to pick out 30 of these cockerels without too much difficulty.

Page 260 shows how to hold the chick and open the vent and what to look for. Even though these drawings are for emus the method for day old chicks is the same.

Refer to pages 221 to 231, as well as pages 257 - 258 . Practice on adult birds first then younger birds until you finally get down to day old chicks.

N.B.: You have to evacuate the excreta before examining the vent.

Good Luck

R.D. Martin

teach_yourself