So much knowledge about chickens is disappearing as the chickens themselves go inside--into the large corporate poultry hatcheries and grow-out houses, and into the zone of technical expertise rather than commonplace know-how. But here is one instance in which the very knowledge itself is a product of technical innovations. At one point we didn't need to sex day-old chicks, because we weren't sending them through the mail as sexed lots of pullets. We'd just sex the chicks by observing them: we'd notice whether their behavior was starting to indicate cockerels, as for example when two lanky chicks go head-to-head in the daring stare down and head bobbing ritual I've seen so many times. Or we'd realize that the tail feathers on a chick were starting to arc out and down in the beautiful fountain characteristic of roosters, as opposed to the stubby, rounded tail of a hen.
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