The Crowing Game

Sometimes something happens to you, and it’s only in retrospect that you realize how utterly blind and stupid you look.  Only a few days ago I found out that my three Barred Rock chickens were not hens, but were in fact all roosters..

All the signs were there, but I was blinded by the fact that the farm I bought them from told me they were females.  About a month ago it finally had cooled off so we were sleeping with the windows open again when I was woken at 5:30 a.m. to a loud commotion coming from the coop.  Thinking it was the return of a raccoon, or something else, I dressed quickly and ran out to the coop hoping my chickens weren’t being assaulted.  Thankfully they weren’t, but my happiness quickly turned to confusion as one of my “hens” was trying to crow.  You would think I would have started to question whether it was a rooster at this point, but instead I googled “hen crowing” and read a few articles saying that occasionally an alpha female will take the place of a rooster and try to crow.  Since “she” was pretty poor at the crowing, I thought nothing of it and hoped she would stop.  The second morning, we got another 5:30 wake up.  I ran out there and put a twist tie around the guilty bird’s leg so I could readily identify “her” later in case I decided she needed to go.  My real fear was that the neighbors would complain and then we’d have to get rid of all of the chickens.

Over the next couple of days, the weather returned to the extreme heat and we couldn’t hear the crowing anymore through closed windows.  Abby and I then went on vacation for about 10 days, and my sister stopped by to feed them, give them water, and collect whatever eggs there were, so we had no way to know if the crowing continued.

Upon returning home, the crowing had only gotten louder, and only then did I started to question whether it was a rooster or not.  I looked up pictures of a hen vs. arooster of a Barred Rock only to realize the only difference was the feathers on the end of a rooster’s body starts to grow up and become longer, and they had pronounced spurs.  This hadn’t happened yet, so I figured that the farmer who sold them to me knew best.  Also, it seemed I was not alone in trying to distinguish males from females as I found several posts on different forums trying to get help in identifying this breed.

With the return of the cooler weather and our windows open again, I attempted to trick the chickens into thinking it was not light out yet by enclosing them in their coop at night and covering the window with a black garbage bag.  Alas, “she” still continued to crow, and we were frequently woken up by “her” morning salute.

Finally last Monday I called up the farm where I got them from, explaining the situation.  I had a “hen” crowing, “she” was beating up one of the other Barred Rock hens, and “she” was bothering the other Rhode Island Red hens.  I asked the farmer whether I could exchange the Barred Rocks for three more Reds.  To my surprise she told me they had several problems with the Barred Rocks, and it was likely that I had, in fact, three roosters.  Immediately walking out there, I realized what an idiot I was.  I had three roosters.  They all had large tail feathers growing up and only getting longer.  The alpha rooster was bullying one of the other roosters and keeping him inside all day.  The alpha rooster was not “bothering” the other Rhode Island Reds but instead was trying to mount them!  Finally, they weren’t laying eggs when they should have been.  A cold hard reality set in that I was a poor suburban farmer, and better than that: I was foolish.  All the signs were there.

Within two hours I had packaged up the roosters into a truck, drove them back to the farm and exchanged them for three more Rhode Island Reds.  The farmer was amazed at the size of the birds, which made me feel like less of a failed farmer.

There’s a moral to this story, and it doesn’t involve counting eggs before they hatch, but maybe before they are laid.  Another life lesson learned at the hand of my feathered friends, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.