Oh, James

As of Thursday morning at 10.30 am, James is officially a boy. There's been more than a little bit of doubt. When chicks are less than 24 hours old they are sexed by professionals and then shipped off to feed stores, but even the best chick sexer is only 80% accurate. There are some breeds that are sexually dimorphic (visually sex-able, in this case by color). But for every other breed you just hope that your sexer was able to do whatever fiddly thing they do to look in the baby chicken's vent and guess right. Other than that, you wait for secondary sex characteristics to appear, usually after a couple of months. In James' case the woman at the feed store thought he may be a boy because his day-old wing feathers were shorter than everyone else's. She's got way more chicken experience than I do, and she turned out to be right!

James has been slow to grow, and slow to develop really rooster-y feathers. He even had a backup name of Moneypenny in case he turned out to be a girl. In the last week however he's almost doubled in size and it's clear that he has the upright posture and curved tail feathers of a boy. Henrietta and Ursula remain clearly dominant in the flock pecking order, but James is busy herding his peers around.

Yesterday morning he crowed for the first time. Just one crow and none since. I am sure that the noise will get old after a while, but his first attempt was quite robust. Good tone, clear and low pitched. Didn't sound like a cracked-voiced high schooler at all! Once I manage to get a video of it I'll post that so you can all experience his masculinity.

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Eggs laid in the coop today: 1
Eggs found in the woods today: 0
Chickens scared by lots of thunder this morning: 5
Cats scared by thunder: 2
Humans who thought it was funny: 2