When we ordered four hens I thought for sure an additional four was too many. We quickly grew fond of each of our hens and it seemed that four could be a good number. However, as time passed we grew suspicious of our favorite "hen" Rosie.
Rosie/Roger at 7 Weeks
Some of the signs we saw:
Rosie was always very friendly to humans, but she greatly enjoyed attempting to fight with the other hens. As soon as they all got outside to play Rosie would be jumping at and herding the other hens.
Rosie's legs were always a little bit bigger than the other hens. She developed little bumps (spurs) on her legs at an early age.
Rosie's comb began to look red-ish at about 6 weeks. S/He was an Easter Egger so her comb never got particularly large, but definitely had the right color.
Rosie always had beautiful feathers. We were sure she would grow up to be the prettiest in the flock. As more and more colors began to appear, especially that brick red color, we knew that this was not hen patterning.
And lastly, when Rosie made that funny screeching noise (early attempts at a crow), we knew that Rosie was in fact a Roger.
Roger at 8 Weeks
It turns out Roger is a very beautiful type of Americana called a Golden Duckwing Rooster.
So what does one do when a hen turns out to be a rooster? We would have kept him, but it is illegal in our town. In fact I'm pretty sure the 2 weeks of crowing that we withstood did enough damage to our relationship with our neighbors. The options were not great, but we were hoping to find someone we knew to adopt him into their flock so that our daughter could have an easier transition.
Enter: Happy Ending...
Thankfully we found a family from school to take Roger. They were in fact very excited to have him join their flock of 11 hens. We went to visit him after he had settled in and found he was very happy in his new coop.
Roger at 4 Months
Look at those fantastic feathers!
Here is Roger trying to share a treat with Nora.
What a sweet young man, he never forgot his ladies!
