Henry the Seventh

I blipped Henry the transgendered cockerel when he was a newcomer in late May, and again more recently, when he garnered a number of supportive comments. Here he is once more, hanging out in the hen house as the evening sun beams in. Griselda is exiting through the pophole. None of the hens is inclined to spend time with Henry and he doesn't seem bothered. Maybe he has realised that the job of cockerel doesn't carry good career prospects.

In 2004 I purchased 6 young Light Sussex hens and the farmer's wife said she'd put in an extra because she thought one looked as it might be a cockerel. And indeed Virginia became Leonard and squired his team of ladies for several years until overthrown by his son, Rufus. (Leonard moved in the some widowed hens next door.) Rufus had a short reign which ended when he Disappeared Presumed Foxed. He was succeeded first by Jarvis and then by Joe: both literally dropped off their perches within weeks. Next came young Hansel, the partner of Gretel, who was easing nicely into the role when he too was DPF. Then I acquired the dashing Caruso who performed the job with great panache until he met the same fate back in the spring.

So Henry is our seventh cockerel - but is he a cockerel? As it happens, gender reassignment is not unknown in chickens. Google 'sex-change hen' and you will find several recorded instances where damage to a hen's reproductive system has caused it to turn into a cockerel, changing shape, crowing and so on. The condition is called protogyny and is common enough to have given rise to the dire warning "A whistling woman and a crowing hen are neither fit for God nor men". (I remember that being recited to me when I first learnt to 'put my lips together and blow'.)

Henry appears to suffer the opposite condition, protandry. I could only find one on-line reference to it among poultry: last year, Gianni, an Italian cockerel from Tuscany, started laying eggs after the rest of the flock were killed by foxes.
At the time Professor Donato Matassino said: "This rooster-hen will be taken to the laboratories for a series of behavioural and genetic tests".
Rather disturbingly only the same Google page I noticed that there was a recipe for Chicken Gianni - by an Italian chef. Surely there's no connection?