First Rooster is Crowing! (Blog Forty-three)

It's Bruce's job to let out the chickens from their coop in the morning and mine to lock them in for the night.  But Saturday, Bruce was away doing a fishing story, so I let out the chickens just  before 6. One chicken paused on its way down the ramp, seemed to steady himself, then let loose with what can only be described as a very feeble attempt at crowing.  Our first chicken to crow!

Sunday morning Bruce was back home and having had Elaine regale him with stories of the momentous event on Saturday, he waited at the ramp as the chickens filed down it on their way to the feeder.  The last bird out paused at the top of the ramp, shook himself slightly, seemed to clear his throat, then emitted a series of five crows.

We have named five of our eight chickens.  Two we are sure are females (Little Spotty Hen and Ruby below) and three we are fairly confident are roosters (Little Jerry, Russell, and Third Man, so named because he was the third to manifest male aggressiveness).

But we are shocked that one of the "Amorphous Three" as we call them (chickens that we don't know yet whether they are male or female) was the first to crow.  The first crower, after his greeting the dawn was finished, marched down the ramp where Little Jerry met him and "smacked" him on the head.  And "First Crower," as he temporarily is being named, submitted, to the smacking.

What do we do now? We are very worried that we may have six roosters in our flock, which would, obviously, tend to defeat the purpose or at least make it difficult to accomplish our main goal of raising chickens for eggs.  If only Ruby and Little Spotty Hen are females, they will have quite a production goal.  And why wouldn't First Crower (below) stand up to Little Jerry who seems to be third on the pecking order behind Third Man and Russell?

Advice from anyone?