my biggest rooster, Pants, has been spending a lot of time lately on top of my hen duck, Surrey, desperately trying to fertilize her eggs. unfortunately for them both, chickens have the pretty standard bird-sex solution of quickly and perfunctorily pressing holes together¹, whereas ducks have a much more elaborate (and more familiar to mammals) penis-in-oviduct arrangement that a rooster, no matter how hard he tries, is never going to be able to replicate². Surrey is very willing and Pants is doing his best but it is Not Happening. she keeps wiggling hopefully around like "up a bit, to the left... almost, I think I felt... yeah, grab my neck feathers and pull... no, to the right now... oh..." and Pants is visibly deflating with effort.
I have four roosters and they will kick each other off their favorite hens. Pants, as the lowest-status rooster, gets punted a lot. but the poultry yard consensus is apparently somewhere between "yeah he can have that one" and "pass the popcorn", which does not make this spectacle any less hilarious to me, the guy staring into the chicken yard and giggling.
1. ornithologists call this a "cloacal kiss". yes, I'm sorry, too
2. he can't even do hand stuff, because he is a bird. tragic
