The Bitches Of Torbay

You know I love my hens, my placid, amiable, pretty hens.  Here they are - Angie with the floppy comb on the left, Anne the biggest and lightest in the middle, and Leanne with the beautiful ring of bright ginger feathers around her neck.

You know we sadly lost Wilma a month ago.  Well, the opportunity arose to have two more hens, 15 months old, ex egg farm HiLines, the same breed as ours.  Why not, we could do with a few more eggs and I like the idea of giving hens a good life with plenty of space and good food.  I decided to no longer name the girls after friends, after the rather traumatic email I had to send to my friend Wilma about the demise of her feathered counterpart!  So, instead, starting at A with christian names, they shall be names after movie stars.  Please meet, looking rather bedraggled from moulting, on the right Angelina Jolie and on the left Bridget Bardot.  :-)

I did what I thought was the right thing, introduce them at the end of the day, make sure to introduce more than just one new bird so it doesn't get picked on, and feed everyone when the new girls were put in the yard for distraction.  It all started off smoothly, the new ladies bogged in at the food bowl straight away and my girls seemed perfectly happy about it.  Well! 

All was fine for about 20 minutes, then Angelina wandered over to Anne (big boss) and gave her a wee kiss peck on the side of her beak.  Anne turned to look, was like WTF, hang on, who the hell are you?, drew herself up to her tallest tippytoed self, then walked right up to Angelina, beak to beak, hairy eyeball to hairy eyeball and did the staring thing.  Ok I thought, this will stop in a minute.  Nooo, it was on, wings flapping, feet kicking like a flipping cock fight! I ended up standing between them to break it up.  Far out, I was a tad shocked, they were like little velociraptors!  And once that happened it was like everyone suddenly became aware of everyone else and the fact that there were intruders.  My girls did not play nicely in the school yard, they were mean, they were bitches.  They chased poor Angelina and Bridget around, jumping on them and pecking them.  Nasty nasty bitchy girls they were.  I stayed in the yard til dusk, trying to let the pecking order sort itself out but getting in the way of any blood being drawn!  Thank goodness it got dark and everyone went to bed and the night was quiet.

But I couldn't sleep, I felt really bad throwing two new girls into the bitchfest playground, so I pondered this during the night, did some googling and decided to make a yard in the yard as was suggested on a few websites, theory being that they can still see each other and sort of get used to each other, but having a fence between them should hopefully avoid bloodshed.

At the crack of dawn I was up and down at the chookyard before anyone could wake up and start bullying again.  I locked Angelina and Bridget in the chook house and let my girls out to range on a fenced grass area, then set to work.  I fenced off a corner of the chook yard and added a makeshift shelter.

I have a feeling these girls don't know how to roost so for the time being I've put a couple of logs on the floor of the shelter, with the idea that maybe they can start by roosting on those, just off the ground.  I've added a nesting box in the yard too, under the big bush.

Then I popped the new girls into their yard in a yard, then retrieved my girls and put them back in the yard, then sat down to watch the dynamics.  It was amazing the difference having a wee piece of chook wire between them, everyone was a lot calmer and quieter.  Anne in the foreground is walking the perimeter with Angelina checking her out.

There was a lot of  'I can stand up taller than you' at the fence and the odd attempt at a peck, but all in all I am happy with the calmer demeanour of them all.  They all settled down eventually to having dust baths in their separate corners of the chook yard which I took to be a good sign.  I think I'll keep the fence up for 4-5 days, depending on how it goes, then I figure I'll just remove the fence quietly one morning.  I know they will scrap a bit after that, apparently the pecking order just has to be sorted out and it takes about a week, but hopefully by doing this they will be a little more familiar with each other first and will luck the assimilation will be a bit more gentle.