Have any of you noticed that the subordinate males don't get as big of combs? I'm noticing this now in my "birthday chicks" as I call them because they hatched on my birthday over the summer. I wound up with three EE males, though I think one may (may, may, may) be a pure Ameraucana that is just recessive white since I did have some allegedly pure blacks that got tossed under the broody. The white cockerel is definitely the lowest on the totem pole and his comb has not bloated up like my other EEs' combs have. Do you think that some of the sexual maturation can be diminished if a male is not the dominant one? In a different pen I have three other EEs and even though I know for a fact that the mother of two of them had at most a single copy of the pea comb gene (she was an RIR x EE mix and had sort of a blobby s-comb), both of those cockerels have much smaller, tighter combs than the alpha male in that pen. That alpha cockerel was out attending to the pullets so maybe they're reaching maturity as well. Oh, come on eggs!