If you’ve been following my blog for the past few months, you may remember Harriet. She has been our favorite chicken from the start (If you want to see her baby pictures HERE they are). A couple of months ago we started to notice that Harriet was looking different than our other two barred rock hens. Her coloring is lighter and her feathers are different as well. She also started to develop her red hangy downs (as I call them) prematurely in comparison to the other hens. I thought she must be defective in some way because she is a bit smaller than the other two barred rocks as well. I was visiting the other day with the lady we buy our eggs from and I was describing Harriet to her and the fact that she seems sort of gimpy. She suggested that maybe she was another breed altogether.
Well, yesterday I was watching her scratch around in my flower beds when she did the funniest thing. I don’t know much about chickens, but as far as I do know, the girl chickens don’t say “cock-a-doodle doo.” I stared at my sweet Harriet for a minute and then she did it again. It took a minute for the horror to really take hold. Harriet… a rooster? But she can’t be! Is there such thing as a girl rooster? Well, there is at our house because there is no way we can get used to the fact that she isn’t a girl. She’s much nicer than our australorp roosters who have already started attacking both us and the hens.
Just to be certain, Jonny and I googled barred rock rooster and sure enough the roosters look just like Harriet.
So out of 27 chickens, our favorite, and the only one with a name, isn’t who we thought she was.
I am not sure how we are going to get over this. For right now we are just taking it one day at a time and we are still calling her a she. The kids have suggested that we change her name to Harry, but I don’t think we can bear to.
To me, she’ll always be Harriet.
Ginny says
Hi Gardenia! Thanks for commenting-I popped over to your blog. Your daughter is adorable!None of our chickens are laying yet and no the males don't lay eggs. All hens are female and all roosters are males. Except Harriet of course. She's a rooster and she's a girl. See, I'm still in denial.
V says
That is TOO FUNNY!I just have to laugh, because I had a lop-earred bunny a few years back that was oh so cute. I called 'her' Lucy and just loved that little thing.. Then, one day while she was having free rein of our hou se, she mounted the cat! Yep! Climbed right on. It was then that I realized that Lucy wasn't a girl! 🙁
Gardenia says
my first post here. haven't been following you long enough to have remembered Harriet from a previous post. but I'm curious… has harriet been laying eggs? do males lay eggs? are there such a thing as males chickens/hens, or are all chickens females and all roosters male. yep, I'm pretty clueless.
Wife to the Rockstar says
oh how funny. i like your chicken (rooster) posts.
BT says
When I was a kid, my sister named her baby kitten Michael Michael Motorcycle. By the time we realized he was a girl, it was too late to change to Michelle. In our minds, that cat was a boy named Michael. It stuck for his whole life.
rachel says
That's hilarious! I'm glad Harriet is still being nice…I know nothing about chickens and roosters, but hopefully s/he can manage to buck the gender role. 🙂
Dorsey says
We had a similiar situation last winter. My daughter adopted a kitten and named her Ruby, a friend kept it at his house until she was to move to New Mexico. The cat had to move in with us for a couple weeks before she left because the friend bought a puppy. So my daughter took the cat to get fixed and the vet's office called after surgery to tell her that the cat wasn't female, but a male that had undescended testicles. That was a shocker. He would always be Ruby to us. The vet suggested we call him Rueben, but…. We tried out several names on him, but it was ackward and they didn't fit him, perfectly like Ruby did. We finally found a solution, and this is it. We call him Ruby Boy. You know like John Boy. Maybe you could come up with something like that for Harriet. I'll think on it and let you know if I can come up with something.
Anonymous says
We found out our cockatiel was female and decided to just stick with "he." Anyway, I haven't commented before, but just wanted to say I think it's great how much you care about animals, and take good care of the ones you have.
whenpigsfly says
Harriet is VERY handsome!!!Reminds me of year ago we took two kittens from a man who assured me they were both female, he even drove 30 miles to bring them to me (I should have been suspicious of that, yes?) and we named them Madeline and Layla. About 6 weeks after we got them, we realied that our girls were very late blooming boys! They stayed Madeline and Layla: THE BOYS, until they died.
Aubrey says
Funny! And Harriet … what the heck? Why not? It would be a good running joke for the next X amount of years! 🙂
crispy says
We recently found out our bunny is a boy and we still think of her as a "she". I can think of her as a "him".
Bill and Christina says
That is so funny. Thank you for sharing! Recovery is a long road but I think you can make it:)