Dominate hen crowing?

[jessupfamily]

OK! I didn't believe him, but I guess it's quite the phenomenon. He does not have a roo with his 10 girls. But just about every morning he hears one of them crowing and fussing. He checks on them just to see her out of the coop with maybe 1 sidekick and both of them fussing and just the one crowing. I thought he was crazy! We've always had multiple roosters, so we wouldn't know if one of our girls were crowing or not! I'm definitely going to start watching though!! Thanks everyone.

I am curious about the old wives tale!

Amy J.

 

[SpottedCrow]

Naw. I whistle too...LOL

Slifer started crowing after Jerry was rehomed for crowing

She laid one perfect yellow egg after a month where I gave her female hormones...she still crowed though.

She was a true hermaphrodite because she actually did the deed with Obelisk and she sort of missed and left a "wet spot" on the floor.

She never fertilized any eggs either.

A hen can become dominant and crow and act like a roo in the flock. Slifer was never dominant. She was always at the bottom of the totem pole.

Sometimes it's a hormonal thing in an aging bird. Her ovary will shut down and the male hormones will take over or this can happen because of an infection.

 

[Jezebelle]

old wives tale...this is kinda creepy....but obviously not true..hopefully


A crowing hen is considered to be unlucky, or foretelling of troubled times.
Grandma would say, "Whistling girls and crowing hens always come to some bad end."
A hen that took to crowing heralded a death in the owners family

 

[wildflower]

So, I chased Roxy, now named Rock, around and finally, after a few claw marks and a gouge, I got he/she settled down enough to really check it (sorry)out. The chicken lady in the neighborhood with 75 bantoms said look at the tail feathers, especially the ones going sideways at the base of the back, where the tail starts. Roosters have pointed feathers. Hens don't. I think we will keep the name Rock and put an add out for a Rooster. My husband will strangle anyone who crows. Darn, I am sort of attatched. I am going to wait until I actually witness the crowing and maybe visit the chicken lady with my bird. Thanks for all the imput, incredible how many girls like to crow! I am hoping Roxy is just a cross dresser, she can stay in that case.

 

[prariechiken]

Quote:
Yep, my grandfather would drop whatever he was doing and kill a hen that crowed....seems the only death a crowing hen heralded around his place was their own.....

 

[Jezebelle]

Quote:
Yep, my grandfather would drop whatever he was doing and kill a hen that crowed....seems the only death a crowing hen heralded around his place was their own.....

wow

 

[ivan3]

Well, I wasn't going to post before taking out the crowing hen and all her buddies to free range, but I got to wondering about the origin of this saying. I figured that it was a Victorian saying picked up here in the U.S. during the Gilded Age (all poise and deportment and euphemism), i.e., a `lady' was considered crass and unrefined if she mentioned chicken `leg' at the dinner table. My favorite example is that of feeling it imperative to refer to Chief Sitting Bull as the `Slightly Recumbent Gentleman Cow'. And of course, a lady never whistles. (search Samuel Bowdler)

However, I was off by a couple of thousand years. Ladies, this saying has nothing whatsoever to do with hens. So many hens, dying in vain

One example from the supplied link (there are lots!).

`A whistling wife, and a crowing hen
Will come to god, but god knows when...'

There is a morning prayer offered up by Orthodox Jewish men, something like `thank you lord I wasn't born a woman'. If I had been, I'd have joined an insurgency of the womb - or some such!

http://www.sacred-texts.com/wmn/fow/fow07.htm