Gertie becomes Bertie after sudden sex change turns hen into a cockerel



The confident strut, distinctive wattle and comb and ear-splitting crowing all suggest this bird is a cockerel.

There is just one problem – a few months earlier he was a she.

The extraordinary transformation has happened since November, when the speckled hen, called Gertie, stopped laying eggs and began developing male characteristics.

Now the bird’s owners, Jeanette and Jim Howard, from Needingworth, Cambridgeshire, are making do with fewer eggs on the breakfast table.



Confused: Jeanette Howard with Gertie - or should that be Bertie?

And they have changed their chicken’s name from Gertie to Bertie.



According to Victoria Roberts, of the Poultry Club of Great Britain, the spontaneous sex change is ‘a one in 10,000 event caused by changes in the bird’s hormones’.

Damage to an ovary can cause the bird’s testosterone levels to soar, turning the remaining ovary into a testicle.

Jeanette, 79, said confused Gertie began to walk differently from her two other hens, Daisy and Gracie, a while ago.

But the pensioner was reassured by her vets that the hen was fine and there was nothing wrong.

Mrs Howard said: 'I bought three chickens a year ago and they were all laying eggs for me until the end of the year.



'They began to moult over the winter and I wasn't taking a lot of notice.

'Then one day I heard this crowing noise and I thought "Where's that coming from?"

'I looked into the garden at Gertie and I saw it was coming from her - or him.'

Jeanette, of Needingworth, near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, said Gertie had suddenly developed a scarlet comb, chin wattle and long tail feathers, all male characteristics.

'It had started cock-a-doodle-do-ing and had grown bits all over its face.

Characteristic: Gertie has grown a distinctive comb and red flaps under the chin

'He had really grown and was strutting around with his head up in the air, so proud of himself,' she said.

'I shall have to stop calling her Gertie now and start calling him Bertie.'

Jeanette said her three hens had laid eggs every day before the winter but their laying has become more irregular.

Delia Richter, a vet at Cromwell Vets in Huntingdon, said damage to the hen's single ovary or a growth upon it could cause it to exhibit male characteristics.

Miss Richter said: 'It would still be a hen but the ovary on the left side degenerates and the right side begins to release testosterone.

'It's possible that's what happened in this case.'

Mrs Howard insisted she will keep Gertie/Bertie, despite its eggs drying up.

'I just thought Gertie wasn't laying because she was miserable,' she said.

'But I've got to keep him now - I couldn't wring his neck after what he's been through.'