When someone gives you three beautiful bantam pullets, supposedly at point of lay, and a couple of weeks later one of them starts swaggering around crowing, and they keep growing and growing, the time has come to look for independent advice.
Not an egg from any of them, and they don't seem to be interested in (ahem) nookie either. Could they be three cocks? Could even the gods be so unkind?
Luckily the Internet is, well, flocking with hen sites. For the sakes of Maeve (macho, hoarse-voiced, red of comb and suspicious of eye, crowing hopefully every morning), Grainne (suspiciously Kellogg's-looking) and Wilhelmina - "definitely a woman," said my son's Dutch girlfriend - I dived in. There was plenty to be found. First port of call was the Poultry mail-list, a silent place with scarcely a posting, unless my email software is misbehaving. So I defaulted to DomBird, another mail-list, this one strangely sited in Poland.
Here were lots of people keeping hens, from the "what age is best for meat and grows up fastest?" type of farmer to the anthropomorphising Silkie-keeper who noticed that her cock wasn't the usual competitive type, and saved titbits not only for his mates but even for the baby cockerels. This romantic soul is always waiting to give his favourites the choicest worms and snail-eggs. "Every day is Valentine's Day with him for a mate," confided his owner.
Then there's the Web. It's full of chicken sites. The kids' favourite is the ooh-ah Feathersite (www.cyborganic.com/People/ feathersite), with its adorable pictures of our feather-footed friends, as well as ducks, geese, guinea fowl, pheasants and the like. Good information, too, and links to addresses for fanciers' clubs.
There are bulletin boards, like the active Poultry Info Exchange message board (www.ameraserve.com/chicken) and the Rare Poultry Breeders version, at www.insidetheweb.com/ messageboard/mbs.cgi/mb54420. There's at least one newsgroup, at sci.agriculture.poultry.
There are several useful mail-lists. Apart from Dom-Bird (LISTSERV@plearn.edu.pl to subscribe), the wild gardening list (Wildgarden at Majordomo@UserHome.com) has lots of poultry-keepers on it. Many of the biodynamic gardeners of the BD-Now list are hen-keepers too (write to bdnow@igg.com and ask to subscribe).
The people who frequent the lists and run the Websites are a practical bunch. They have instant answers to any problem from roaming cats to unthrifty chicks (garlic powder!) aggressive roosters (cuddles!), cold climates and hens that try to hatch Kinder Surprises.
All of these are great sources of information. Mind you, I still have no idea if Maeve, Grainne and Willy are boys or girls. They all have hackle feathers, but none has spurs; but nary an egg to be seen. They are as pure as St Enda, without a thought of any high jinks with the opposite sex (whichever that may be). And every morning I go out to the music of Maeve crowing happily to greet the nine-o'clock bell.
Some fowl sites:
The Poultry Place: home.att.net/~m.swafford/
The Chicken Page: ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~ifza664
Page O' Chickens: www.cnr.berkeley.edu /~rgill/Chicken.html
Feathersite: www.cyborganic.com/People /feathersite Little Farm: ameraserve.net/little-farm/
Nubin's Chicken Coop: www.geocities.com /Heartland/Meadows/1915/
Lucille Redmond is at lucred@indigo.ie