There "She" Crows...

It's hard to sex a chicken.
Yes, I just said, "sex a chicken" and no, I have never used that sentence before.
Anyhoo, using official farmer jargon, it is hard to sex (determine the gender of) a chicken.
Because of this there is no 100% guarantee on the gender of the chick you are purchasing, but there are many, many wives tales.

The tractor supply employee told us:

"Pick up the baby chick, if it curls its feet up to it's body, it's a female."

Another blogger mentions this:

"Hold your chick on their back in your hand. If they stop kicking after a short time, it's a pullet, if they keep kicking it's a cockerel."

To that I would like to add a third option, "If they stop kicking after a long time, they might be dead."

So with no way to accurately know what we were getting, we went ahead and bought a mix of pullets (young chickens that are almost 100% positively sexed as females) and a couple of straightruns (50/50 chance of winding up with either gender).

I got the pullets because I wanted egg laying hens and I got the straightruns because they were interesting, and I thought I'd take a chance on some exotic chickens, hoping they would be hens and not roosters.

Growing up, I would often visit my grandmother in Monclair, CA (southern CA) and I have fond memories of feeding the free range chicken in her neighbor's backyard.

Man, how I'd love to go back in time and tell that old woman (the neighbor, not my grammie) how progressive she was in her urban backyard chicken-keeping and how I'd one day aspire to do the same.

So, in tribute to Josephine, the first urban chicken I ever met, I passed the name down to the little grey fuzzball with grey legs and a spunky attitude.
This chick had a name to live up to, and big talons to fill.

"She" filled them all right...along with other chicken anatomy that shall remain nameless.
(Frankly, because I have no idea what it's called or how it works and I'm happy to keep it that way.)

There were gender clues I tried to ignore in wishing Josephine to be a hen.
A large comb.
Huge waddles.
Mounting the other hens.
Then one day I heard a God-awful shriek.
It was like a short bark mixed with the blood curdling scream of a child.
Sort of a loud cluck - it definitely did not sound like crowing.

Maybe it was time I accepted Josephine for who he was and let him reach his full chicken potential..?
Perhaps all the gender identity pressure got to him and he was trying to stifle his crowing.
This went on for days and I couldn't take it.

I brought him inside, sat him on my lap, and pulled up the ol' YouTube.
I actually played for him, over and over again, footage of a crowing rooster.
This blue roo was gonna learn to crow.



A couple of things to add:

1. Yes, that was me lovingly holding and stroking the chicken (not a euphemism, I swear!) and yes, it seems weird in retrospect.
2. What did roosters do without YouTube??