As I sit here, taking a reprieve from the seasonably warm temps, watching hens run across this small organic Michigan farm, roosters crow and I think about how the hens caretaker will be selecting how his flock will continue. He prefers to sell the eggs, and doesn’t want to take care of more birds than he needs to. For these hens to continue to lay, a certain number of roosters must be present to encourage eggs. He now uses a bit of intuition and a well known ratio of roosters:hens to understand how many and of which roosters to donate to the chopping block.
Now, if my egg farmer friend had been as adept a ganja farmer as he is a bird farmer, he would have known to cull ALL of the males from the patch before flowering begins. This unfortunate pollination happened a couple of years ago. As a new ganja grower who propagated from seed (as opposed to clone), he wasn’t aware that a grower can tell the sex of a plant by finding and observing the ‘pre-flowers’ of each plant. These pre-flowers are single bracts of a male or female plant that begin forming at each inter-node after the plant reaches 3-4 weeks old.
In these pictures, a grower can see how a male pre-flower can have a couple of spur-like structures or a small ball, while female pre-flowers will often have a pointed, almost conical shape and will often exhibit a pistil (the ‘hair’ that catches pollen).
Male Pre-Flowers 
Male Pre-Flowers
By differentiating male from female early, a grower can help themselves cull un-needed plants early to free up care time, a breeder can separate plants for further selection, and an indoor grower can free up vital space and save resources by removing these plants.
Female Pre-Flowers 
Female Pre-Flowers
Be sure to let the plants grow out a little more and being 100% sure of its sex before making the final decision to cull as on more than one occasion many a grower have thought a male was a female and visa versa.
