Project Chickens before the Eggs - Lesson 116 - Princess Tiny is a cock - oh joy, here we go again

Well it’s official. Once again, despite what we thought were our best efforts, we’ve had a cock infiltrate the hen house

Even with our strongest denial tactics in place (it’s not a rooster tail, it’s just bling – that’s not a rooster comb, females can get combs you know) it couldn’t keep us from ultimately accepting the fact that Princess Tiny is indeed Prince Tiny.

This is definitely a tiny cock

Having gone through this just last fall, you would have thought we would have learned our lesson, But I swear, it wasn’t our fault, the woman who sold us Tiny was ABSOLUTELY sure that both she and her sister (who happens to be Jodi-Picoult) were female.

For the last few days we’ve been hearing a crowing in the morning, nothing really earth shaking but still suffering with PTSD from the experience with our last rooster Betty, we knew what was coming and it was enough to strike fear in our hearts.

Still, we hoped. Maybe it was Zelda crowing out her dominance, or Isabelle howling that (once again) she had been left behind in the hen house while the older hens were released to the dog pen. But when I crept up on the birds to find out who was making that racket, well that was when I knew for sure. There was Princess Tiny sitting on a roost crowing for all the world (or at least all our neighbors) to hear.

When a rooster crows, it’s something they put their entire heart and soul into. First they take a deep breath, then they arch their neck, puff out their neck feathers and bellow to an unseen moon. They are alerting the flock, calling them in from suspected danger. A crow is an alarm, a method of protection, a way of keeping everyone in the flock safe. It has a purpose, but it can also (especially in the wee hours of the morning) be nothing short of a final straw in neighbor relations.

Princess Tiny is well, tiny. We’re hoping that her (his) crow won’t be that loud. Maybe Zelda, the dominant female will kick his scrawny butt to the curb thus emasculating him and solving the problem. Perhaps a little bird just won’t be able to get the physical breath to crow much louder than the noise of a bunch of kids playing on the swing set.

I don’t know what will happen, we want to keep Princess Tiny if we can. The only thing I absolutely know is that soon we’re going to have really teed off neighbors again. Oh joy.

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