Picked auto-sex breeds, got roos anyway?

Luke 13V34 said:

According the very website in question, hens can crow! You learn something new everyday

http://www.mypetchicken.com/backyard-chickens/chicken-help/Can-hens-REALLY-crow-H23.aspx

Click to expand...

I still remain reserved in my opinion...it can happen, but it is rare... a lot rarer than perhaps wanting to sell "crow" collars....a lot of people own all female flocks and do not have a crowing hen....but it is physically possible due to the genetics described in the article.

It would be interesting if someone actually did a study to see how common it is ....but I think it is more on the urban myth for it being common occurrence.

ETA: Although the study I quoted did pretty much that.

LofMc

Lady of McCamley said:

That's very unusual to happen...it typically occurs when age or trauma or disease (such as tumor) shuts down the main ovary such that the dormant right ovotestes, which has remained undevelop since embryo, kicks in with androgens bringing secondary male traits such as feather growth and crowing...akin to an aging woman's voice deepening and growing chin hairs. It would be very, very rare for it to actually produce sperm, although reports have happened.

From my reading, those who state they have a hen crow almost always find out they have a rooster who slowly matured and the eggs they thought they were getting from that bird were indeed from another. If a hen crows, she isn't usually laying eggs due to the hormonal problem, but I won't discredit that in our weird world of poultry,  just looking at chimera prove that weirder things happen. 

LofMc

http://mysrf.org/pdf/pdf_poultry/p11.pdf

Click to expand...

There are more hens out there that crow than you think. I had a game hen that started crowing when she was about 2 years old. She continued to lay and she actually brooded chickes for me several times. So I for one know they exist.

enola said:

There are more hens out there that crow than you think. I had a game hen that started crowing when she was about 2 years old. She continued to lay and she actually brooded chickes for me several times. So I for one know they exist.

Click to expand...

Interesting to know...not so surprising with game, for some reason.

Does bring to mind my grandmother's old saying..."whistling girls and crowing hens shall come to no good ends."

She would say that anytime I would whistle.

Still be fun to see a study that finds out how many there really are, how common is this trait. I for one have never had a crowing hen, although more than one noisy one...and I predominately keep a female flock...moving roo's in and out as hatches go.

Was her crowing the tried and true cock-a-doodle-doooo....or more of a juvenile crow?

Good stuff to know.

LofMc

I was with you on thinking it didn't happen or if it did, it was a rare case of ovary trauma, but it is sounding like it is more common than that, although probably breed specific!

Lady of McCamley said:

 Interesting to know...not so surprising with game, for some reason.

Does bring to mind my grandmother's old saying..."whistling girls and crowing hens shall come to no good ends."

She would say that anytime I would whistle.

Still be fun to see a study that finds out how many there really are, how common is this trait. I for one have never had a crowing hen, although more than one noisy one...and I predominately keep a female flock...moving roo's in and out as hatches go.

Was her crowing the tried and true cock-a-doodle-doooo....or more of a juvenile crow?

Good stuff to know.

LofMc

Click to expand...

It is a funny story concerning that hen.

A guy that works with me raises game chickens (for something we don't talk about here). He had a young hen steal away and hatch 14 chicks. Since knowing the parentage is very important in "this type of chicken breeding" he was going to cull all of the babies. I told him I would take them, so they became mine. I kept 4 of the pullets and rehomed all the rest of them. They roosted on my deck rail and one night three of them disappeared.

I replaced them with three barred Rock pullets. When she was 2+ years old she started crowing. It started out garbled like a young cockerel does. But it wasn't long before she could really belt out a genuine crow. She never missed a beat on the egg laying. The funny thing? She had never even seen a rooster, much less heard one crow. I never did see her try to mate with the hens, but she was definitely the alpha hen.
When I finally did get a rooster from a friend right here on BYC, she was outraged and fought him just like a real rooster. She stomped his butt!!!! Over and over. It took a 3 year old barred rock rooster to dominate her. Even after hatching chicks several times, she would still belt out real crow every morning until her accidental death.

Thanks to all you folks who have replied to my post. I am only now returning after nursing my disappointment and resulting depression after coming to terms with the reality of finding out I have two cockerels to deal with.

Strawberry the Cream Legbar crowed yesterday, a one-note screech, but an unmistakable adolescent crow, as if my face needed further rubbing in it that I am housing two roos.

Back to my two crowing SS hens. They crow the entire cock-a-doodle-doo. But the emphasis on the notes is more blended than a regular rooster crow, with the final note more of a "yodel". They perform with the requisite posture, but without the masculine volume.

Sylvia learned to crow a couple years ago while I had two roosters. She was always into standing up to both of them, and they usually kept a respectful distance. Linda has only just recently learned to crow, and no roosters have been present in the flock for a year. As I said, they are both excellent layers, but they both have aggressive personalities and are bullies to the extent they have their own coop and run to spare the rest of the flock from getting a daily thrashing.