GENDER BENDER: When we left you yesterday, our chicken Stephanie had made a miraculous recovery from her “egg-bound” condition.
But then, inexplicably, she crowed! Why would a girl chicken crow?
“This came as a total curve ball. I didn’t know what to make of this new development,” writes Amy Mallison-Austin. Stephanie is the favorite chicken of her son, Henry, 11.
Amy contacted the hatchery in Iowa to see if they could give her some advice.
They suggested Stephanie might be “hen-feathered,” something that is common in certain breeds of chicken.
“If she (?) had been a male, she should have started crowing at around three or four months of age. But, she is almost 8 months old. The very helpful woman at the hatchery said that sometimes hens make a ‘roostery’ sort of noise, but it’s generally not true crowing.”
Amy sent pictures to the hatchery hoping that will help them make a determination.
Meantime, we again turn to Google to learn that males in certain breeds of chickens can develop rounded feathers more typical of females rather than pointed feathers like males.
(Steph is a Sebring, one of those breeds.)
A female chicken’s plumage pattern is dependent of the presence of estrogen to feminize the feather follicle — that is, to direct the follicle to produce rounded feathers — in the hackles and tail.
And these breeds have a single gene mutation that can result in the excess production of estrogen and thus, the “female feathers.”
Meanwhile, androgen, such as testosterone, are hormones that control the development and maintenance of male characteristics — the growth of comb and wattles in roosters. They are also responsible for roosters crowing.
Armed with this new knowledge, Amy went on lookout: “Stephanie returned to her ‘peeps’ in the coop and I did a bit of observing. It soon became clear that she is indeed female.”
Real roosters, it seems, were “chasing” Stephanie. Or as Amy so delicately puts it: “You see, roosters tend to run after the hens in a specific manner. They don’t run after each other in this manner if you see where I’m going with this.”
“The mystery of Stephanie has been solved.”
But if so … why did Stephanie crow?
It’s one of two things, we’d guess. It could have been those “roostery noises” some hens make. We think she was just happy to be healthy and so she crowed for the heck of it!
