Last week on Twitter I mentioned that Harriet, my Rhode Island Red hen, is starting to take on rooster characteristics. Then I promptly forgot to follow up on that.
Harriet has always been the most aggressive of the hens. Even so, I had noticed she was getting more aggressive lately. So that’s the first rooster-ish trait, although not a very definitive one.
But the other day, I noticed that she’s growing spurs!
Spurs are a long claw that roosters grow on the backs of their legs, for fighting.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that Harriet is undergoing a gender change. It turns out that it’s not entirely uncommon for the most dominant hen in a flock to take on some male characteristics.
Plus it’s springtime, and they’ve just started laying in earnest, and that kind of thing can really play havoc on a bird’s hormone levels.
So I’m not really sure what’s going on there, or where it will end up. As a cisgender bystander (and a mammalian one at that), all I can say is, Harriet, I’m here if you want to talk.
All I can say is that chickens just have no end to weird…
Maybe she’s not undergoing a change, maybe she just wants to be the chicken version of a drag king?
You’ll have to start calling her Harry.
Today I learned what “cisgender” means. Awesomesauce.
Are you still happy you have chickens? I think you must know whether it was ultimately a good idea by now.
Honestly? I don’t regret having done it. Like if I could go back in time, I would do it all over again.
But if something happened tomorrow and I lost all four of them, I probably would not replace them.
In my sleep-deprived haze I thought that you could make a great pun from “Twitter” and “follow up on”. Then I felt sad for myself. Anyway: hooray chickens!
Messed up hormones, eh? Poor Harriet, I know EXACTLY how she feels……
Let us know if Harriet starts talking to you. We don’t really care what she says, it’s the talking thing that is the issue.
Fascinating! Mere change in behavior I could understand, but actual physiological changes due to perceived mastery over the other hens? I had no idea that was possible that high up the evolutionary, um, scale/level/tree. Maybe goo in a petri dish growing some manly appendages would not surprise me, but a whole chicken body willing (and able!) to produce something more substantiative than mere muscle bulk increase is not something I would expect!