Snakes, Chickens, Sex, and Sermons?

We were able to get the jungle under control this past weekend, but we crossed paths with 2 additional snakes..that makes 3 snakes in two days...one King snake and two red rat(corn) snakes. I was down at my friends house this morning and she showed me a single winding track through the grass-the track was muddy, the grass was green, so it was easy to see. The track was several inches wide. The only thing that would make a track like that is a big rattlesnake, or a monster king snake that just ate the monster rattlesnake(like the one we saw in SC). This track definitely has a Wow Factor associated with it. The snakes are definitely out and about.

We have a few more roosters to dispatch, but in doing that, we will end the great 2008-2009 hatching project to replace chickens lost to predators. I started with 6 birds, and now have 6+ roos that need to be dispatched, 30 hens and 1 rooster in the main coop, and one poor battered hen in the chicken tractor. There are 2 or 3 birds in the 30 that might be roosters, too, but right now they are just androgynous pullets. I have a beautiful partridge rock looking roo that I am thinking of keeping. He would be part Partridge Rock(mother) and Blue Laced Red Wyandotte(father). Currently, I have a RIR/BLRW roo. I've forgotten the number of hens a rooster can service, but I think it is somewhere close to 15. I doubt I will keep all the pullets/hens, but I can always raise two flocks separately. I wonder if two roos will fight if there are sufficient hens for both?

I'm quite amazed at the percentage of pullets I hatched vs. roosters/cockerels. I think I've maybe a dozen+ roosters in all the birds I've hatched since Thanksgiving and with close to 70 total birds, that's rather amazing. Even at 15/75-that's only 20% roosters, and I believe the actual percentage is closer to 17%. It's got me wondering about evolution and the role temperature plays in determination of sex and embryo development. I know that with some reptiles, noteably crocodilians(alligators, crocs, caimans,and gavial), temperature of the eggs during incubation does influence gender. I believe that it must be true with some birds, perhaps in my case, the chicken eggs I hatched. The incubator temps were kind of high, 100-101F. In some reptiles, higher temps can switch off male expression genes and create females. The embryo starts off as a male, but when the egg is exposed to higher temperatures, the embryo undergoes a gender switch and the hatchling becomes female. In addition, some animals that appear female are actually male and visa versa, i.e. their sex is ambiguous;they are intersexed. Could this have happened with my chickens? I think it is possible. Birds are descended from reptiles and the sex change thing is related to a changing environment. Perhaps during warmer eons, more females are produced to expand the population, but during colder eons, the embryos remain predominantly male. The planet is currently experiencing a warming trend as we all know....is it Nature's Way-the ultimate survival technique-the Master's Plan- to turn males into females to expand the population while it is warm and to prepare for the cold eon to come? Are my ambiguous, androgynous looking pullets really male?

If this interests you as much as it does me, read this:
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/sex2.htm
References are listed at the bottom of the page, but consider this:

"Sex is relative. Among animals, especially cold-blooded ones, males
can be turned into females by increased feeding or a change in
temperature. In the case of warm-blooded creatures, it can be done by
extracting ovaries to turn, say, a hen into a cock. In many species,
sex reversals happen naturally. Quahogs (hard-shell clams) are born
and grow up male, but later half of them turn female. Slipper shells
and cup and saucer shells do this too; they commence every season as
males, but nearly all of them later pass through a phase of
ambisexuality and turn into adult females.
Fish have evolved the quickest sex-reversing capacity of any animal:
some species not only change from male to female as they grow, but a
few, like groupers and guppies, develop the ability to switch
sexually back and forth within seconds. [ I intentionally picked an image of fancy guppies-quite 'flamboyant', huh?] If two female guppies meet
while feeling amorous, one is likely to start turning into a male so
he can mate with the other. Occasionally both shift at the same
moment, which usually results in a furious fight, with the winner
emerging as a female who somehow forces the other to stay male."

If you want a good mental exercise, think about all of this with respect to human evolution, global warming, homosexuality and gender identification. You've probably already figured out that I believe homosexuality, intersexuality, as well as heterosexuality to be natural phenomena. I realize that many of you believe otherwise due to your various faiths, so I don't mean to be disrespectful to your beliefs, but I do believe that there is sufficient scientific evidence and sufficient Biblical contradictory passages to suggest that perhaps we all should have a more open mind to things we don't fully understand or know. I suppose the middle ground we meet on is this:
Matthew 22: 36-40
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.