Relative Something

We are two months into our third year of buying chicks online and having them shipped through the mail. This year is the first time we have had reason to question the gender of one of the birds. Each day the evidence mounts, pointing to a probability that one of our two New Hampshire chicks is a cockerel instead of a pullet.

Do you see any signs of a difference between these two?

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The second one’s face is a little out of focus, but you can still get a general sense of the difference in the wattle and comb and detect the wider chest of the young dude on the left.

Cyndie thinks she heard an early practice crow last week that sounded like a “honk” before our rooster suspicions began to really gel. It was such an uncharacteristic weird sound, she had no idea who made it until we started looking into the possibility we might have a rooster. Cyndie then found some recordings online that matched what she’d heard near our coop.

Looking back, a behavior Cyndie witnessed one night when she got to the coop before they were all inside can be seen in a whole new light. When a Light Brahma and a Dominique straggled behind outside after all the others were in, the big New Hampshire suddenly ran down the ramp and grabbed the Brahma by the back of the neck, pushed her head into the ground, and held it there for a bit.

Then the New Hampshire let go and walked back up the ramp and inside. The other two followed soon after. Cyndie was shocked by the scene and I remember her describing it as seeming like the New Hampshire went out and ordered the other two to come inside. We thought it was just one of the hens being “bossy.”

Based on what we are coming to terms with now, that behavior would be totally in line with the way a rooster would treat the hens.

So, I guess we’ve finally had the question answered for us as to whether we should get a rooster to protect the hens, or not.

All that’s left now is to see if we can guide this cockerel toward behaving kindly with humans and ferociously toward predators when the rooster hormones fully kick in next year.

Cock-a-doodle-doooo!

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