She's a HE?

T-rav posted this on his family's blog. I thought I'd share it with all of you.

Have you ever gone through life thinking that something was one way and then it turned out to be the other? We've had a chicken for four months that we thought was a hen. When we bought her she was too young to lay eggs, so we didn't worry too much about her. The other two hens we bought at the same time started laying eggs about a month ago, but Blackie never did. We did our internet homework and found out that chickens of her breed don't like to lay eggs in cold weather so we made some excuses for her. Yesterday I observed some suspicious barnyard/backyard behavior involving the chicken in question and another hen and I knew I needed to go back to the source of all light and knowledge in the world...the internet. I found the above picture and our "hen" looks suspiciously more like the one the right than the left. "She" also fits a whole lot of other patterns that make "her" a "him". So it turns out that our late blooming hen is actually a rooster. I feel kind of confused and both Kelly and I have had a hard time changing to masculine pronouns when referring to Blackie.

I think the most helpful bit of information that I found for how to tell the difference between a Black Jersey Giant hen and rooster was the one that told me to look into their eyes. A hen has a peaceful absent sort of look in her eye while a rooster should have an intense look with a glimmer of anger or rage. Today we made sure to look our chicken in the eye and sure enough, there is a fire burning behind those beady black eyes.

-Trav