The Marvelous Mr. Marple

There’s a lot of mythology around sexing chickens. While some chicks can be accurately sexed after hatching by the color of their down (in some breeds males look distinctly different from females) or the length of their wings, in most breeds it’s next to impossible to tell. That hasn’t stopped people from trying. One old method is to use the shape of an egg: an egg with a cockerel (a young rooster) will be shaped like a football and an egg with a pullet (a young hen) will be rounded, so the wisdom goes. In another, people are told to hang a needle or a ring above the chick—if it in a circle, the chick is a female, if it goes back and forth it’s a male. (In case you were wondering, none of these work.) In one thread of old wives’ tales around chicken sexing, one woman posted that if you pick the chick up, females will pull their legs into their bodies while males hold them straight down. “My experience is that it’s right about 50% of the time,” she ended. I couldn’t tell if she meant this to be a joke or not. It’s a good one either way.

Vent sexing, the most accurate version we’ve come up with to date (other than DNA testing which is too expensive and time-consuming for most hatcheries to use), became popular in the 1920s in Japan. Essentially, sexers are trained to look inside a chick’s vent—the single orifice birds use for defecating and reproduction—and see if there’s a bump or not. A bump means male; no bump, the chick is a female. I visited a hatchery last summer and watched some chicken sexers at work. It’s no surprise that this profession was the subject of one of the first episodes of Dirty Jobs. Even when the sexer pointed at the bump directly, I still wasn’t sure if I was seeing anything or just trying to be polite by nodding. I can’t imagine doing that for even fifteen minutes, much less one eight-hour day after another.

As a result of perhaps the difficulty and fatigue of looking at chick butts all day, even the most exceptional sexers are only about 98% accurate. Most hatcheries have a 90-95% accuracy of their sexed chicks; even though they might give a 100% guarantee, that just means that you’ll get your money back in the case of a rooster with mistaken identity.

I’ve had chickens for a little over two years now and in that time we’ve added 12 sexed pullets to the flock. Statistically, an error was bound to happen. But that’s the funny thing about statistics, for every lucky person who never gets a sexing error there are bound to be those who encounter multiples. It’s just the luck of the draw.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve started to suspect that my sweet Partridge Cochin chick Miss Marple was actually a Mr. Marple. It’s hard to know for sure when you have a mixed flock like I do. Usually you could compare chicks but with breeds that have almost one-foot difference in their height not to mention shape and feathers, that doesn’t work so well. I tried to hold out hope but time is only proving my early suspicions. At eight weeks old today, Mr. Marple continues to grow out his fleshy red comb and wattles and new feathers coming in are looking less like the tell-tale double lacing of a pullet and more like a dark cockerel. He’ll likely be a gorgeous and friendly bird but also a giant. Often when you see a photo of a child holding a chicken that seems bigger than she is, it a cochin. Roosters are 11 pounds on average and as big as two-feet tall.

Some rooster breeds get a bad reputation but Cochins are known for their kind temperament. When Queen Victoria went chicken crazy in the 1800s, it was because of Cochins, lapdogs of the poultry world. If you were going to have an accidental rooster, you can do a lot worse than a Cochin. The problem for me, of course, is that I live in a city where roosters aren’t allowed. If Miss Marple is a Mr. Marple, I’m counting down the days until we say goodbye.

Many people happily put up posts for unwanted roosters on craigslist where you’ll never know if they’re going to wind up in a home, stew pot, or worse—used for fighting. Same with the local feed store where you can apparently drop off roosters to live in a cage until someone comes by to take one home. People with soft hearts often foist unwanted roosters onto animal sanctuaries that are overrun with boys already. I understand the impulse even though it feels like making my problem someone else’s. My chickens are pets first and foremost and like all pets, I think it’s your responsibility to provide them good homes throughout their lives—even if that good home has to be with someone else.

This is an issue that’s particular to chicken owners, especially as backyard chickens have become so popular in areas that allow hens but no roosters. Even on farms where roosters are allowed, the reality is that half of all chickens hatched out are going to be male. A healthy flock requires more females than males to work. Some people have started raising “bachelor flocks”, rooster-only groupings. Apparently boys get along just fine as long as there are no girls to fight over. (Extrapolate that information to the rest of the animal kingdom as you will.) Someday, when I live on a farm in the country, I hope to have a bachelor flock of my own.

But for now, I sigh more than smile when I look at Mr. Marple. Maybe most urban chicken farmers aren’t as close to their flocks as I am but it’s hard, really hard, to continue raising Mr. Marple knowing that in a few weeks or months he’s likely to start crowing and I’ll have to say goodbye. It’s not something any other pet owner has to deal with. It doesn’t matter if dogs or cats or rabbits or reptiles or pet birds are male or female. Only roosters have to go. The more I think about it the more unfair it seems. I understand that not everyone wants to live next to a rooster though they’re equally as loud as a barking dog (which, in fairness, aren’t the most fun either if they keep it up all day).

I feel bad for the roosters of the world, rehomed and unwanted entirely on the basis of their sex. I feel bad for the rest of the chicks Mr. Marple has been raised with and wonder what they’ll think when one of their own goes missing. When it rains, Mr. Marple towers over the rest of them and keeps the littlest bantam chicks warm. He’s curious and sweet. As a chick, he happily curled into the crook of my elbow and settled in for a nap. I wish there was something I could do. I know there’s nothing I can do besides find him a new good home to live in.

There are a lot of ways to have a good life. Mr. Marple doesn’t have to be a pet to be happy. Though my flock looks to me as a source of treats and protection, they rely on each other’s company a lot more than mine. In an ideal world, I’m imagining him going off in the backseat of someone’s car. Maybe the windows are open. Maybe he lets out a crow or two on the way. Then he reaches a new home on a farm where he can tidbit and protect a flock of hens. He’s so large that the farm kids can’t help but pick him up for a snuggle every once in a while. I think I could say goodbye knowing he was going off to a life like that.

News from the Coop!

This has been a hard month for the flock. In addition to doubts about Marple's sex, my sweet hen Joan passed away suddenly on May 9. She was one of my first three chicks and now Peggy, her best friend, is the only one of the original bunch that's left. There were no previous signs that Joan wasn't doing well and after Wanda's death two months before, I decided to get a necropsy done to figure out the cause and make sure it wasn't anything likely to affect the rest of the flock. Thanks to a wonderful vet in Portland, we found out that Joan had something called "fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome" which happens to overweight chickens. People with pet chickens love to spoil them but my girls have been on a diet ever since I learned about what a frequent cause of death this is for laying hens.

Poultry News

Police were called after complaints of an “aggressive chicken” approaching customers at the ATM, chasing people, and attempting to climb into their cars with them. [KVAL]

A Swedish city tired of people not respecting social distancing, covered a park in chicken poop to discourage people from using it. [Global News]

Australia's National Poultry Show (which is often called the "Chicken Olympics") has been cancelled due to Covid-19. [ABC AU]

The CDC is once again warning people not to snuggle their chickens or else risk salmonella. I don't kiss my chickens, do wash my hands, but snuggle them when they let me and I've never had an issue. Stay healthy everyone! [Forbes]

If you see chickens in the news or know a good chicken tip, please email it to me: underthehenfluence@gmail.com

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Until next month!