Well, it appears we may have made a teeny mistake on the gender of one of the chickens... yes, it appears Patricia is either a full blown Patrick, or is currently sitting on both sides of the fence (is that possible with a chicken?)

The symptoms:

1. She runs at you flapping and gobbing off. I thought she was just being friendly, but read on...
2. She glares at you - tips her head on one side and glares with one beady eye. Its quite challenging lol.
3. She jumps on Myrtle and Gladys backs and bosses them around. They tend to hang around together pathetically but quite amicably - if they come near me she is straight up.
4. She's huge and has one of those hat things on the top of her head.
5. She doesn't seem to have spurs - but seems to have stumps where they should/would be
6. Mollie reckons she crows at her

I slept with the window open all night last night (freezing) to see if I could hear her crowing in the morning - they are in their little house across the field - but nothing...

So, is she a gender bender chicken, simply dominant - or do we have ourselves a cockeral??! She is still young, very funny and actually not particularly aggressive...but she does seem to have some considerable nerve. For a chicken.

Actually, chickens can change! But if Patricia's getting a noticeable comb on her head, she's possibly truly a Patrick. Pullets/hens tend to have much smaller combs than cockerels, depending on the breed.

aw the poor thing, theyve called it Freaky as well.

the comb issue depends entirely on her breed as several breeds have full combs on females. The other behaviour can be pretty normal bossy hen behaviour!!

sounds like a cockrel to me !

Yvonne

Heard her crowing this morning! I'd say that makes her mroe cock than hen!

So now she's called Hayley - as in Cropper :D

Not necessarily! I had a hen that crowed, and she definately was a hen, eggs and all!

Oh gawd. How do I find out for definite?

I'm sure all will be made clear in spring! If she's Patricia she'll start laying. If he's Patrick he'll start treading the others! :D

LOL @ Hayley Cropper :D :D :D

I'm really missing my Cockrels :( - I had 4 beautiful Barbe D'uccle and Dutch/Belgian Bantam boys - -no bigger than the size of my hand and lovely friendly birds - all gone now  - we think that a bird of prey got them as they used to just roam around the lawn through the daytime and were always locked away safely at night - now I only have my HUGE gold laced Orpington boy left and I miss all the differerent crowing sounds in the morning.  I may get some more in the Spring - there are always people looking to rehome surplus cockrels.

Yvonne

Well, I went and let the gobbing off one out of the coop this morning. She's much bigger than the others - rather like Foghorn Leghorn. She has to bend down to get out the little door thing. She wasn't "cock a doodle doo-ing" as much as just yelling and crowing really. Very funny. She has massive feet too. We love her (him) to bits :)