Friday, March 04, 2005

A Quick Question

Update: Or maybe the question should be how do y0u definitively tell a male from a female chicken when they are grown?

Originally we bought 50 roosters (white leghorn type) and 50 brown egg-layers (as day-old chicks) of various breeds. As readers know, many did not survive our dog.


After eating some roosters, we have in the main coop, 3 of the white leghorn roosters and 8 hens - we think. Two of the hens, while they don't crow, copy the roosters in attempting to "fertilize" eggs. Sometimes they are pretty aggressive. One of these is a 'Turken'. The other we don't know the breed of. The Turken's comb could be large enough to be a rooster. Since we don't have two of the breed of opposite sex, we don't know how different they should look. The other 'hen/rooster' is different than all are others, white with some brown; but 'her' comb is small.

So our basic question - (I'm sure we will figure it out eventually based on egg production) - is whether these two could actually be roosters.

From the small holding in Bethune....

Oremus pro invicem!

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