ANOTHER HEN THAT CROWED 



William H. Gates 

 Professor of Zoology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, La. 



THE assumption of the second- 

 ary sexual character of the op- 

 posite sex by an animal has been 

 noted and mentioned in a num- 

 ber of papers. The Journal of Hered- 

 ity illustrates the case of a Buff Or- 

 pington hen which acquired the char- 

 acters of the male in the matter of the 

 comb. A somewhat similar case oc- 

 curred in our own flock of White 

 Wyandottes and a more or less com- 

 plete examination of the individual 

 was made. 



The hen was hatched on March 24, 

 1913. Both her sire and dam were of 

 good "show stock" and were exhibited 

 a number of times and won several first 

 prizes. She herself, however, was not 

 a show specimen, but during her pullet 

 year turned out to be an extra good 

 layer. She was not trap nested, but was 

 in a pen of but five birds and could 

 therefore be easily watched and her per- 

 formances noted. It is not a difficult 

 matter in a small pen of this size to 

 learn to know the egg of each individ- 

 ual, and while one is apt to slip up at 

 times and make a wrong guess, on the 

 whole the records are fairly accurate. 

 The laying record of this hen, made in 

 this way, shows her to have laid 196 

 eggs during her pullet year. It was 

 on the basis of this record that she was 

 kept in the flock and was mated for 

 breeding purposes in both 1914 and 

 1915. It was also on this record that 

 she was kept over the molt in 1915 with 

 the intention of using her again in 1916 

 breeding pens. 



While there are no absolute records 

 of the number of eggs laid by this hen 

 in the breeding pens, there is satisfac- 

 tory evidence that she did her share of 

 the laying, for at the end of the season 

 she showed every sign of having been a 

 consistent layer. Such characteristics 



as pale shanks and beaks, late molt, etc., 

 which, as every poultryman knows, in- 

 dicate that a bird has not been idle. 



There is no record of the number of 

 times this hen went to setting during 

 her pullet year, but in the breeding pens 

 she went to setting twice in the season 

 of 1914 and three times in 1915, show- 

 ing again that she had probably laid the 

 normal number of clutches of eggs. 



Up to the fall of 1915 she showed no 

 sign of being anything but a perfectly 

 normal hen. Her comb, if anything,- 

 was smaller than the average Wyan- 

 dotte, probably an inherited quality of 

 the shown characteristics of her par- 

 ents. Her shanks were clean and free 

 from stubs and feathers, and the spur 

 head, as in other hens of this variety, 

 was hardly noticeable. During the molt 

 of 1915 this hen lost all of her feminine 

 characteristics and assumed decidedly 

 those of the opposite sex. The comb 

 increased to that of the average male 

 of fancy stock ; the spurs, which up to 

 this time had been entirely dormant, 

 grew very rapidly, reaching the size 

 shown in the photograph in about three 

 months; both the hackle and saddle 

 i^e^thers, while not as fully character- 

 istic as in the male, showed the dis- 

 tinctive narrow feathering. 



In her actions she changed completely ; 

 she started crowing, and in a short 

 time developed a full, prolonged crow. 

 She, however, crowed only early in the 

 morning, never, so far as known, after 

 she left the roost, but regularly every 

 morning she would crow for an hour 

 or so before daybreak. When given 

 grain she would call the other hens with 

 the characteristic clatter. When en- 

 tirely separated from males she was 

 occasionally known to tread other hens. 

 In fact, in every particular she seemed 

 to have acquired the male characteris- 



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