PioneerChicks
Naturalist
You're not wrong! When there are no roosters around or when a hen gets to open to lay but still wants to contribute to the flock, she might grow rooster feathers, give alarms like a rooster, crow like a rooster, not lay eggs, and maybe even try "mating" the other hens. But she cannot fertilize eggs because she is not a true rooster. There is an official term for this but I can't remember itIt doesn't sound logical to me, but i read somewhere years ago that chickens are born with both sexes, an ovary on one side and a teste on the other side. And that is how they somehow "change" sex. In some hens, if there is no rooster around putting off male pheromones, her body will transform to male. I wish I could find that study to link to.
I still think that it wasn't as long as 6 months from the original chicken ranch. I've had a few hens penned up with no possible exposure to roosters for over 2 months and still have fertile, viable eggs that hatched. Only 2 of 10 hatched, but hatch they did. But it wasn't 6 months. Maybe OP is a little confused about the timeline.