I didn’t give it too much thought when Hope, one of our two Rhode Island Red hens, suddenly stopped laying two years ago, when she was barely more than three years old.
She did seem a bit young to be calling it quits — Nellie, our other Rhode Island Red, still produces eggs several times a week, even though she and Hope are the same age, But chickens are individuals, after all, and Hope was behaving normally in every other respect. So at the time, I chalked up the seemingly premature arrival of “henopause” to some isolated physiological quirk.
Except that that wasn’t the end of the story. Hope had begun a metamorphosis, and although it wasn't nearly as dramatic as Gregor Samsa’s, it was noteworthy in its own right.
As I said, the first sign of this was Hope’s “decision” to get out of the laying game. Then, a relatively short time later, her comb — the spiky red appendage atop a chicken’s head — began to grow, both in size and in the brightness of its coloring. Finally, Hope developed a spur on the back of her left leg.
She was looking more and more like a rooster.
Hope remains a bit smaller than Nellie, and she hasn’t belted out any cock-a-doodle-doos. (Yet!) But the large comb seemed out of place for a hen. And the spur, in particular, is something that is more commonly found in roosters than in hens.
I thought I was reading too much into all of this, until yesterday. That’s when we took Hope to a veterinarian because the spur had grown very long and it curved back toward the leg. We had been filing the tip of the spur every week to prevent it from reaching the leg, but when Hope molts later this year to replace her old feathers with new ones — a months’ long process — it will be impractical and potentially harmful to pick her up for this weekly ritual. While we waited for Hope's new feathers to fill in, the spur would continue to grow, unchecked. A radical intervention was called for, sooner rather than later.
The vet, who has chickens of her own and has been practicing veterinary medicine for decades, marveled at the spur, the size and eye-popping color of Hope’s comb, and the fact that she stopped laying at a relatively young age. As she prepared to cut back the spur to a nubbin (yes, there was blood, and cauterization), the vet offered a decidedly contemporary assessment of Hope’s transformation: “She’s a transgender chicken!”
She did seem a bit young to be calling it quits — Nellie, our other Rhode Island Red, still produces eggs several times a week, even though she and Hope are the same age, But chickens are individuals, after all, and Hope was behaving normally in every other respect. So at the time, I chalked up the seemingly premature arrival of “henopause” to some isolated physiological quirk.
Except that that wasn’t the end of the story. Hope had begun a metamorphosis, and although it wasn't nearly as dramatic as Gregor Samsa’s, it was noteworthy in its own right.
As I said, the first sign of this was Hope’s “decision” to get out of the laying game. Then, a relatively short time later, her comb — the spiky red appendage atop a chicken’s head — began to grow, both in size and in the brightness of its coloring. Finally, Hope developed a spur on the back of her left leg.
She was looking more and more like a rooster.
Hope remains a bit smaller than Nellie, and she hasn’t belted out any cock-a-doodle-doos. (Yet!) But the large comb seemed out of place for a hen. And the spur, in particular, is something that is more commonly found in roosters than in hens.
I thought I was reading too much into all of this, until yesterday. That’s when we took Hope to a veterinarian because the spur had grown very long and it curved back toward the leg. We had been filing the tip of the spur every week to prevent it from reaching the leg, but when Hope molts later this year to replace her old feathers with new ones — a months’ long process — it will be impractical and potentially harmful to pick her up for this weekly ritual. While we waited for Hope's new feathers to fill in, the spur would continue to grow, unchecked. A radical intervention was called for, sooner rather than later.
The vet, who has chickens of her own and has been practicing veterinary medicine for decades, marveled at the spur, the size and eye-popping color of Hope’s comb, and the fact that she stopped laying at a relatively young age. As she prepared to cut back the spur to a nubbin (yes, there was blood, and cauterization), the vet offered a decidedly contemporary assessment of Hope’s transformation: “She’s a transgender chicken!”
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