The chicks finally reach adult size and weight in October. While the same size, they must consume more energy than their parents, because the chicks are still molting their feathers. As the hunting season opens, most young roosters have replaced all their brown body feathers with the adult-colored feathers. However, close examination of the chick’s three outermost flight feathers (the long feathers on the wings) show that they are still growing (blue, blood filled shafts). Remember that the adult rooster finished his molt last July, so in October his flight feathers are not growing. This is one way of telling if you harvested a tender young bird or a tough old bird. The length of the young rooster’s outer three feathers can also tell you how old (in weeks) the bird is, when it hatched, and when incubation started. State game agencies use a wing gauge to translate flight feather length into bird age.