Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Slow feathering? What's your experience? Male or female?

Well, in my flock of little mixed mutts, the girls seem to get their primaries before the boys, so in any given batch of chicks 1-4 weeks old, almost anyone running around with a long tail is female while boys are still sporting round fuzzy rumps.

That seems to be the way with ours, too. The tail feathers are the last to grow, especially on the cockerels, and mine were hatched at the end of May.

Hard for me to tell with the silkies as they always seem to have that tuff of fluff at their tail.

In my flock of mixed breeds, it seems to depend on the breed. I don't really pay too much attention to tail development early on anymore. Although it's fun to speculate.