Type of chicken. Can you tell what type of chicken you have by looking at the chicks?

Question

My children got chicks for easter (NOT MY IDEA!!!), and I was wondering if you can tell what kind of chicken you have by the way the chick looks. Also do they need to have a light on them all the time? These things never sleep, and peep all night long, can I cover them up and turn the light off so they will shut up?

They are inside right now (in my dinning room) and it stays warm in here, so I am not sure about the light. They are only staying in the house until my brother gets them an outdoor pen built and they are old enough to go outside.They are yellow with some red markings and 1 of them has some white wing feathers (so i figure its some sort of white chicken).

Also lastnight they had plenty of water and food and wouldnt be quiet so we turned the light off and went to bed, I came down and checked on them they were quiet but still running around, so I guess they are warm enough??

Answer 1

You probably got those cute little yellow things and at this point it is hard to tell what breed they are. . . you might ask the person who got them for your children where they got them and then give them a call. They will know what kind they are.
YES,you have to keep them warm and the light bulb helps to do.
Hang the bulb high enough so they can't get to it and possibly move it and cause a fire but low enough to keep them warm.
They WILL peep all day and I do believe they will hush when it gets dark. . . dark tends to put them in a slight trance. . . it is always easier for me to handle my hens/roosters when it is dark and they have gone to roost.
Now,you need to be figuring out what you are going to be doing with these chicks when they get bigger. . . they will be pretty much full grown at 4-6 weeks,you'll be surprised how fast they can grow.
Keep them warm,give them Chick Starter you buy at a Farm Supply Store and make sure they have plenty of fresh water.
You will also need some kind of bedding in their box etc to help absorb the poop between cleanings which should be atleast every other day.
DO NOT give the chicks anything that has salt on it. Birds do not have the ability to process salt and it will kill them.

Answer 2

Most pet shop purchased chicks are leghorn or Cornish breeds.The reason being is they are easily dyed.Yes they need the light on all the time in order to stay warm.If you keep them together in the same box and keep feed and water available at all times they will be much quieter especially at night.
If the chicks weren't bought at a pet shop and they are not dyed there are a few ways to determine what breed they are but that would be a long and lengthy explanation.Yellow chicks come from white chickens.There are several breeds of white chickens though the most popular is white rocks, cornish and leghorns.If the chicks are naturally a red color then there are again many breeds they could be.Top breeds are rhode island red,newhampshires and red sex link.if they are black in color again there are many breeds though barred rocks and wyandottes.
There are hundreds of breeds of chickens.It will be easiest to determine what they are once they have their feathers.
The best way to determine the sex of a chick is simply by time.Roosters will develop a spur dot a little faster then a hen will.Also comb development becomes more predominate with roosters by 6 weeks.The waddle development again is quicker with roosters then with hens.By 12 weeks of age their appearance is enough to determine their sex.

Answer 3

When you say what kind, I am guessing you mean what breed. Well, it is quite hard to tell at this sort of age. If you tell me what their markings are, then I may be able to help. You can also look at various pictures of chickens both as chicks and grown up, listed by breed at feathersite.com

They DO need to have a heat lamp all the time, as they cannot produce enough body heat to keep them warm by themselves yet. They do sleep, I can assure you of this, but turning off the heat lamp would be thoroughly dangerous to their health. If you cannot cope with the peeping, then I suggest you move them to a room you only use during the day, like the kitchen or dining room.

Make sure you are feeding them only chick crumbles (also called chick starter), they can have as much of these as they like, but if they do not get them then their growth will be stunted and they may die. You can find these at an agricultural feed merchant, such as TSC, Agway or Rural King (USA) or Countrywide or Scats (UK).

www.backyardchickens.com
www.allaboutchickens.tk

Answer 4

Is the sex of the bird what you want to know?

[edit] Methods of chick sexing
There are two chief methods of sexing chicks: feather sexing and vent sexing.


[edit] Feather sexing
Feather sexing is easy, but it requires that the chickens be specially bred to manifest their sex in differences in the feathers as hatchlings. Male chickens in these breeds have longer wing pinfeathers than the females do, which makes them relatively easy to tell apart. Most chickens do not have these traits bred into them, and the hatchlings are identical to all but the skilled eye of the professional chicken sexer.


[edit] Vent sexing
Vent sexing involves literally squeezing the feces out of the chick, which opens up the rectum slightly, allowing the chicken sexer to see if the chick has a small "bump", which would indicate that the chick is a male. Some females have very small bumps, but rarely do they have the large bumps male chicks possess.

Vent sexing is not easy. The sexual organs of birds are located within the body; the professional vent sexer has studied their external appearance, which can fall into as many as fifteen basic patterns, and learned to identify which ones are male and which female. Vent sexing is a difficult trade to master; many professional vent sexers are Japanese, where the art originated. The mystery of vent sexing was revealed to the Western world when a seminal paper was published in Japan in 1933 by Professors Masui and Hashimoto, which was soon translated into English under the title Sexing baby chicks. After Masui and Hashimoto's discovery, interested poultry breeders brought in people who had been trained by them to teach the art, or sent representatives to Japan to learn it. The skill is complex and has been likened to skill at playing chess and other crafts or games where pattern recognition is the key to success.


[edit] The chicken sexing machine
In the 1950s, several machines were invented that illuminated and magnified the cloacas of newborn chicks, and chicks could be sexed by inspecting them with this machine. This method is obsolete; only two manufacturers made the machines, and both have left the business.


[edit] Alternative methods
Small poultry farmers whose operations are not of sufficient size to warrant hiring a chicken sexer must wait until the hatchlings are four to six weeks old before learning the sexes of their chickens. At that time their secondary sex characteristics begin to appear, so anyone can sex a chicken.

Answer 5

You can keep the chicks quiet by putting them in
a box and put a cover on the box so they do not
have lite, as at night time they do not need light,
In the day time natural light is fine. If the chicks are
old enough to have a tail usually after 3wks then
they are hens and if it has no feather tail then they
are roosters, males.

Answer 6

well.... when my chickens were little turning off the light worked but they had to settle down first same with ducks