web analytics

Transgendered chicken edition

suitchicken

Not my artwork. Reverse image search doesn’t tell me the illustrator either. This drives artists crazy – the internet is great at disseminating art, but not so great at making that work for artists.

If you hang around chicken groups long enough, somebody is bound to tell you the story of a hen that turned into a rooster. Not just a lead chicken getting bossy, as they nearly all do, but literally turning into a rooster, with a comb and a crow and everything. I was agnostic on the subject.

Then I accidentally stumbled over an article that explains it. A bit. It’s kind of short.

A female bird has two ovaries, but normally only uses the left one. If that ovary is damaged — say by an infection — the right ovary becomes active. It can happen to any bird, apparently.

But the right ovary produces more testosterone. There’s a political joke in there somewhere, I feel sure.

So the affected bird stops laying (usually) and grows male plumage. There’s a lovely picture at the link of a peahen with the full peacock deal going on. They become sterile – or, at least, never fully develop as males. In one example, the male who favored her continued to court her after the chance. What a puzzled bird that must be.

I wish there was more there on behavior. It’s hard to imagine an evolutionary reason for a useless backup ovary, unless the man-hen maybe takes a role in protecting the flock.

At the bottom of that article is a link to a scan of another article about a particular gender bending hen. The expert quoted says the right ovary actually becomes a testicle, but she also says “A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men” is in the Bible. It is not.

Good weekend, all!

Comments


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: January 27, 2017, 9:42 pm

So, uh, well, how do they taste?


Comment from Niña
Time: January 27, 2017, 10:08 pm

The things you learn at Stoaty’s!


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: January 27, 2017, 10:26 pm

Is this now a chicken fetish site??


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 27, 2017, 11:01 pm

This was ALWAYS a chicken fetish site.


Comment from Skandia Recluse
Time: January 28, 2017, 12:36 am

Don’t tell the progressives. There is enough gender confusion, gender fluid, sexual preference problems already. Don’t give them any ammunition to say that changing genders is natural.


Comment from SCOTTtheBADGER
Time: January 28, 2017, 1:13 am

I watch Perry Mason every night at work. Alas, Barbara Hale is no more, no more Della Street.


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: January 28, 2017, 1:29 am

Oh, no. John Hurt has died. I thought he beat cancer but I guess not. He was one of my favorites and one of the few straight actors of that generation. He was only 77. 🙁


Comment from dissent555
Time: January 28, 2017, 2:35 am

Apparently Mike Connors (Mannix) has also passed.


Comment from Mr. Dave
Time: January 28, 2017, 3:44 am

Butch Trucks, drummer for the Allman Brothers. RIP.


Comment from Nina
Time: January 28, 2017, 6:46 am

Bad start, 2017…


Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: January 28, 2017, 12:39 pm

Hens turning into cockerels?

Soros has been at the chickens, too.


Comment from Timbo
Time: January 28, 2017, 2:44 pm

Today is the start of the Chinese New Year. This is the year of the rooster.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: January 28, 2017, 7:32 pm

So it is, Timbo. Kunghei fatchoy!

I thought Barbara Hale died years ago. Maybe you’ll feel less sad if you watch her rolling down a hill screaming in MST3K’s telling of the Giant Spider Invasion.


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: January 28, 2017, 7:46 pm

Maggie Roche of The Roche Sister died. The Grim Reaper, 2017 Edition, is rocking and a rolling:

http://variety.com/gallery/celebrity-deaths-of-2017/#!1/john-hurt-dead/


Comment from Niña
Time: January 28, 2017, 11:07 pm

I saw on FB today that Jerry Brown’s prostate cancer has reared its ugly head again. I don’t wish cancer on anyone, though, not even him.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: January 29, 2017, 3:50 pm

This seems like a good time to mention that my Aunt Lola worked as a chicken sexer at a hatchery when she was just a teenager—fifteen as I recall; this was in the early 1930s. She was supposed to be one the best and fastest they ever employed.


Comment from Retired Spook
Time: January 29, 2017, 4:50 pm

We had a hen, during our brief foray into Rhode Island Reds, who never grew the male plumage, but would attempt to crow. And she’d beat the crap out of the rooster when he’d try to get frisky with one of “her” hens. One night, doing a quick head count to make sure everyone was tucked in, I discovered one more head than we’d had the night before. A quick check showed that our bossy hen had “acquired” one of the neighbors hens, as well.


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: January 29, 2017, 7:52 pm

Now we’re on to lesbian chicken sex…


Comment from J.S.Bridges
Time: February 1, 2017, 11:50 pm

And to think, some folks question whether there really are Aliens* in the Universe…

Birds – ‘specially the sorta-semi-“domesticated”, biggish ones – are surpassingly, ever-surprisingly weird, in so many ways…Good thing (for us, as well as – maybe – for some of them) that a lot of ’em are pretty tasty, if well-prepared. Otherwise, kinda difficult sometimes to justify keepin’ ’em around for a lot of folks.

Yes, they’re often-enough kinda purty and fun to watch – but so are sunrises and sunsets, without crappin’ all over and needing to be fed and housed, y’know?

(*No – not talkin’ ’bout “illegal aliens”, which are what Barky Obambam an’ similar fools are obsessed with calling “undocumented immygrunts”, or jes’ plain “immygrunts”, an’ sechlike…)

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny