"Hermaferdite" the Chicken

I got to thinking about this sex change stuff and it reminded me of chickens my grandparents had.

When I was a kid my grandparents raised roosters for meat. They would get 50 Barred Rock chicks at a time, but out of that 50 there were always a few hen chicks that had been misidentified as roosters. They raised a few hens for eggs so the hens were always spared. There was one hen we used to call "Hermaferdite" (I know that is the wrong spelling and pronunciation, but that is how we said it). Hermaferdite thought she was a rooster and acted like one. She was pretty nasty, used to try to mate the other hens, and would crow kind of like rooster too. We all thought it was pretty funny. Hermaferdite looked like a normal hen, she laid eggs too, but psychologically Hermaferdite was a rooster. Thinking back on it now, the other hens mostly kept their distance from her.

Now this is a pretty interesting bit too, it has to do with how they know what sex a baby chick is. Chicks all look the same for the first few weeks, so what they have to do is squeeze the poo out of the chick's butt and look for a bump up there. Chicks with a bump are roosters, no bump, hens. Which brings to mind, how did they always manage to mistake a few hens for roosters? Well, it is because some of the hens have a bump there too. So I guess while developing in their eggs those baby hens probably had just enough testosterone to make those little bumps. Obviously in the case of Hermaferdite that little bit of testosterone gave her somewhat of a rooster brain.

My grandparents always kept an adult rooster to guard over the hens. Roosters are mean and tough, even little Banty roosters will attack you. My cousin and I would slap our stomachs to make rooster flapping noises, then the roosters would come running over and attack. It was fun with the little roosters, even more fun with Sammy, the adult Barred Rock. We loved Sammy. One day he snuck up on me and stuck one of his spurs deep into my leg. I think after I got hurt my grandparents did not want a big mean rooster around anymore. One day the fox got Sammy. He broke Sammy's neck, but the dog chased him off before he could eat him. Anyway, my grandparents picked the most timid rooster out of the bunch to save to look over the hens. No matter what we tried my cousin and I could not make a fighter out of him. If we made the flapping noise he'd be heading for the hills. He looked like a normal rooster. He did not act like a hen, but he did not act like a normal rooster either. Thinking about it now, I remember Sammy was mating with the hens a lot. They all had quite a few feathers pulled out, but I'm not sure if that timid rooster ever mated with the hens.

The moral to the story is that with chickens I have observed at least one that was a biological female, but seemed to be a psychological male, and a biological male that seemed to be a lot more psychologically female. So, I guess people can be biologically female, but psychologically male and vice versa too. I hope my story gives some comfort to those of you who feel like you are trapped in the wrong body. If this type of thing happens to chickens then I guess it must also be what happens to transsexual people.

Raggy

Don't let other people tell you what God wants you to do.