my former egg-laying hen is a trans-rooster?!

[chickima]

He crows, has grown enormous, has stopped laying eggs and is now mounting a hen and pulling out her feathers. What to do?

 

[Peppercorngal]

It is possible, (I don't know how rare) for a hen to transform into a rooster. It's when the left ovary stops working and the right takes over. If you are worried about your hens being bullied you can try to isolate your now new rooster! It's a hormonal thing, unless you can find a vet to administer hormones to make a hen again, you really can't do anything. Good luck! Here's an article to read: https://www.livescience.com/13514-sex-change-chicken-gertie-hen-bertie-cockerel.html

 

[aart]

He crows, has grown enormous, has stopped laying eggs and is now mounting a hen and pulling out her feathers. What to do?

How old is bird?
Pics would help here.

 

[Cryss]

How long was this chicken actively an egg layer? How old is this bird? How many other hens do you have? How old are they? Is it not possible one of them has been laying the eggs since they usually all lay in the same nest?

 

[chickima]

How long was this chicken actively an egg layer? How old is this bird? How many other hens do you have? How old are they? Is it not possible one of them has been laying the eggs since they usually all lay in the same nest?

The rooster is about 2 years old, and we believe it was laying eggs for some 5 months once we adopted it. We saw it laying its blue eggs...Thanks for asking...

 

[chickima]

It is possible, (I don't know how rare) for a hen to transform into a rooster. It's when the left ovary stops working and the right takes over. If you are worried about your hens being bullied you can try to isolate your now new rooster! It's a hormonal thing, unless you can find a vet to administer hormones to make a hen again, you really can't do anything. Good luck! Here's an article to read: https://www.livescience.com/13514-sex-change-chicken-gertie-hen-bertie-cockerel.html

Thank YOU immensely...

 

[sourland]

Yes it can happen. I have been around chickens for 70 + years and have seen only one instance of this. Happened in a friend's flock where an aged RIR hen presented as male. Male specific feathering, crowing, and mounting hens. Before we could kill 'her' and check the ovaries a fox caught and ate 'her'.

 

[Boonie Stomper]

Fascinating!

 

[elmo]

Yep, been there, done that.

Our hen Pokey laid eggs, brooded and hatched out a clutch of eggs, then in her middle years developed an internal infection that shut down her functioning ovary. Antibiotics cleared up the infection, but it took a year or so for her ovary to resume functioning. During that interim, she acted like a rooster, grew rooster like saddle feathers, and even started croaking out crows.

Later, her hormones settled down and she transformed back into a hen and started laying again.

Our vet really enjoyed having her as a patient since it was the first time he had seen this sort of thing personally in his career.

 

[----------]

i need to ask this .if it does go to being a rooster the eggs would be infertile?