When I walk out the door in the morning, I am assaulted with the neighborhood roosters and their loud greetings of the new day. Our neighborhood is more or less rural-suburbia, with folks having one or two acre lots. On those lots they can have chickens or horses or cows, and god knows what else… I guess most of my neighbors have chickens and choose to keep roosters. I on the other hand, I choose to not have roosters. They are beautiful, I admire them, and that’s where the attraction stops; and after concerned painstaking effort on my part to choose chicks which were hopefully female, I ended up with FIVE beautiful Roosters and Nine hens. I was awaken one morning with a horrific squalling, squealing, and hooting weirdness coming from the direction of the chicken yard. Stumbling to the door I peered outside in that general area and proudly attempting to crow was one of the new pullets. You could hear him trying to form a crow but the noise was a pitiful example of crowing. Continue this progressive morning scenario for two weeks: The family who lives the next road over must have several roosters, and I watch the little gray one I have listen closely as they one after the other, crow with a vengeance. Then he begins to attempt a mimic of their crowing. Except his crow was totally backwards… I was hoping and praying this was just an overly testosterone laden female crowing (they occasionally will attempt to mimic). The days following however, proved me wrong. Dayam! The little Gray Roo pullet who is attempting to crow is a Blue Ameraucana (Not really blue). Here’s a photo of a Blue Pullet.
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Most chickens when they crow make a Urt Urt Urt Urrrrrr sound. This little dude hit notes nothing like that. I busted out laughing… Ouuuuu-Urrrrr-Urt-Urt-Urttttt! Ouuuuu- Urrrrr-Urt-Urt-Urt! I could see him with a face which said, “No that’s not quite right”! He kept practicing and practicing, his face contorted with the effort. He even bent his neck sideways trying to squeeze the vocalizations just right. This kept up for about two weeks. Then suddenly another one popped out with a tentative crow. Oh God…. More Roosters! That week and the week that followed I counted a total of FIVE Roosters! They were promptly packed up and driven back to the breeder who guaranteed that they would be hens. If I ended up with any Roos’ he’d take them back. He was good to his word, but he was really surprised that his method of sexing them had failed so badly. I told him that the Blue Ameraucana crowed backwards. He figured they just had baby crows and had not quite got the crowing down yet. Then as I stood there talking to him, the Blue let out a healthy, Ouuuuu-Urrrrr-Urt-Urt-Urt! The man turned quickly at watched him let out another Dyslexic Crow and he laughed saying, “Well I’ll be Dang” The little guy does crow backwards!”. Skip (the chicken guy), ended up showing him with the 4H kids. I wonder how a Dyslexic Rooster fared out with the 4H judging? The Chicken Mama
life with chickens 