When she began to develop tail feathers, they curved down instead of up, they were dark, much darker than her sister’s. Her posture was more upright, her legs were thicker, and she did not get involved in the pecking order at all.
At about 16 weeks, Dolly began to mount her sisters. “Well," we thought, "I guess that settles that." Having heard about how aggressive Rhode Island Red roosters can be, I began to pick up Dolly more. Whereas the other pullets didn't mind being picked up, Dolly hated it. She would scream and kick and have an absolute fit. As the pullets began to come in to lay, they would squat when I walked by. For those of you have never seen a chicken squat, it's basically "assuming the position." They hunched down and stick their wings way out. They will either curve their rear ends up or down, depending on whether or not they are receptive to the male. Dolly definitely did not squat. When friends would come by, they would all point to her and say, "well, there's your rooster."
About this time, Dolly began to grow really long black tail feathers, much longer than before. But then one day, the tail feathers fell out. All of them were gone. Within a few days, Dolly's behavior began to completely change. I went to pick her up for our daily wrestling match, and she calmly sat in my arms. She stopped mounting her sisters, and she began to squat. She was still much bigger and much heavier than her sisters, and ChickenMama and I assumed she was somehow intersexed. Here she is with a suddenly stubby tail and a much more hen-like position. You can still see some of the black feathers underneath, but the longer ones have fallen out.
Now before I proceed, I should lay out a little bit about chickens and their sexual organs. First of all, males and females are not that different from one another. Male chickens do not have penises. Instead, both males and females have a cloaca. When they mate, it's called a "cloacal kiss," and the sperm from the male testis travels from one cloaca to the other and fertilizes the egg. When baby chicks are sexed, the examiner squeezes out any feces and looks in their vent for the inappropriately named "rudimentary sex organ" (as to why this is a misnomer, see "no penis," above). It looks like a small pimple. In expert hands, this method is 90 to 95% accurate, but because some female chicks have rudimentary sex organs, and some of these are as large as the male’s, chicken sexers sometimes get it wrong.
Females usually have only one working ovary (the left one). If this ovary is damaged, it may become what is called an ovotestis, that is, a gonad that shows both male and female characteristics. When this happens, if enough testosterone is produced, hens may transform physically and began to look and act like roosters. Humans, incredibly invested in maintaining clear distinctions between male and female, like to dismiss such cases as folklore. But they do happen, and more frequently than one might imagine. In chickens, it is almost always a sex reversal from female to male. Here are some examples:
The sex change chicken that crows
Chicken sex change confirmed by veterinarian
The sex-swap chicken called Georgina that turned into a cockerel named George
"Hermaferdite" the chicken
Transgendered chicken baffles animal experts
Back to Dolly. ChickenMama and I figured that there was some damage to a gonad, and whether Dolly had an ovary, a testis, or an ovotestis, we couldn't be sure. Now before anyone gets excited and thinks that I am claiming that Dolly had a sex reversal from male to female (I know how you humans are when it comes to sex), Dolly was never verifiably male. She never crowed (although hens sometimes do, including our girl Stripey who finally shut up after we got some roosters), she never developed spurs (although some hens do), and she certainly never fathered any offspring. In fact, some weeks after the other hens began to lay, Dolly started laying eggs. Perhaps there was something wrong with the development of her ovary, but along the way it started working. We simply don't know.
Today, Dolly is the alpha of our flock. She is the clear ruler of the roost, the head of all of the hens and roosters. She is very calm, but when things get out of hand, or a fight breaks out, Dolly intervenes and sends all of the chickens running. When the hawk flies over, Dolly stands at the edge of the henhouse watching it and making warning sounds while the others cower inside. I once came upon a skunk trying to get into the pen. Dolly swooped down from the roost and hit the fence; the skunk sprayed and took off. The barn smelled for weeks, but Dolly had defended her flock. When we reintroduce a chicken who has been sick or when we introduce a new chicken, all of the other chickens bully, peck, and chase the newcomer. Not Dolly, she calmly eats near them and protects them if the others get too rough. In this picture, you can see our youngest birds, a pullet and a cockerel, sitting peacefully on the roost next to and below Dolly (the cockerel next to Dolly is a Sebright bantam, nearly full grown. Interestingly, Sebright males are hen-feathered, meaning that the males have the same feathering as females, and lack the pointy feathers commonly found on the necks, backs, and tails of roosters. Since we're on the subject of intersexuality, hen-feathering in Sebrights is caused by a mutation in which the tissues of the skin convert male sex hormones into female sex hormones).
Those at the bottom of the pecking order have learned that if they roost near Dolly, no one messes with them. If they don't get close to her, they get chased all the way to the bottom. I should also point out that Dolly, despite looking more and more like a hen, especially after her first molt, is still significantly heavier and more solid than any of the other hens. However, her comb and waddles have not grown, in fact, they seem to have shrunk. As you can see in the previous picture, Dolly's comb is smaller than before, and significantly smaller than Loretta's; Loretta is the other Rhode Island Red, at the top right of the picture. Loretta looks bigger in this picture, but trust me, Dolly is both taller and considerably heavier.
Make of all of this which you will, but whatever is or was going on in Dolly’s sex organs, the other chickens couldn't care less. There's a lesson in that for all of us.
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