HOW TO SEX DAY-OLD CHICKS
(Page 3 of 5)
Fortunately, the trained eye can still discern differences between the true male process and the female protuberance at hatch. The cockerel's organ (whether regular, small, flat or divided) consists of compact, lustrous tissue that continues to hold its shape when exposed. The female bulb-even a large one—is less conspicuous and lacks sheen and elasticity. When the vent is spread apart and the process revealed, the pullet's bump doesn't hold but fades away in seconds. If the bulge is touched, it will depress.
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Accordingly, when Lyle sees a shiny bulb-shaped process protrude to the vent's lower edge and stay put, he plops the chick into the cockerel bin. And if the same area bears a shallow depression, just a trace of dull protuberance or a larger bulb that fades away, he plunks the bird—with a somewhat wider smile—into the pullet container. The occasional case he's unsure of goes back into the unsorted box to be examined again later. The cloacal folds rearrange in the meantime, and the process becomes easier to sex.
Lyle Scheline's large, blunt fingers and make-light-of-it modesty belie the deftness and coordination necessary for his fast, decisive skill. Undoubtedly, though, vent sexing does take a knack. The sorter must be firm and gentle simultaneously: If the chick is held too tightly, it will weaken and later die. Lyle knows sexers who work a third again as fast as he does—employing a different hand scoop—but their hatchlings don't always survive. Yet you can't be too queasy about hurting the little birds, or you'll never get their vents open far enough to expose the phallus and will end up trying to make guesses about the upper cloacal folds.
Speed is important too. If you're not swift about completing the check—or if you press down on the lower part of the abdomen as you pinch back the right edge of the vent—another glob of feces will erupt and coat the cavity. When that happens, you blot the area.
Nevertheless, I'd say that any nimble-fingered homesteader could vent sex a good 75% of his day-old chicks, without an instructed apprenticeship, just by knowing what to look for and how to spread the aperture. (The other 25% of discriminations probably do take a tutored eye.)
If you want to learn the art, it's best to put your fingers through the motions of hand scoop and vent spread before you try to sex a live bird. Dime stores carry little rubber replica chicks intended as babies' bathtub toys. Buy one, magic-marker a small circle at the appropriate place and practice.
As a novice chicken sexer myself, I find that the most difficult manipulation of the technique is evacuation of the chick with the left thumb. Only rarely do I find that exact spot on the lower belly which relaxes the sphincter when pushed. What I do instead is sex my hatchlings over a large laundry tub.
The problem is that if the chick isn't evacuated beforehand, the feces seep into the cavity as you spread the vent apart. This isn't the clean-cut eruption the thumb press effects: It drips, I blot . . . it squirts, I blot . . . and again, until the aperture is clean and I can peer in. This procedure takes more time and is certainly messier, but it works. When I'm done, the toilet paper goes in the wastepaper basket and I turn on the tub faucet and flush the rest of the droppings down the drain.
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