The Saga Continues

Not surprisingly, the members of the Wallingford Hen House are facing yet another dilemma. After we put our healing Delilah back into the coop with the others overnight, we faced round two of the chicken pecking catastrophe. Although this one didn’t result in a nearly-dead bird, it did cause Delilah’s wound to open back up a little. And despite tediously applying anti-pecking substances to the wound, Athena still has it in for her. But wait, the plot thickens.  It seems like Delilah’s leave of absence has caused the ladies to totally forget who she is. Originally I thought that was fine; it doesn’t come as a huge shock as chickens are pretty unintelligent birds.

However, the chicken amnesia has made it so Delilah is perceived as an outsider by the other ladies. As the highest chicken in the pecking order, Athena makes sure Delilah knows she’s not welcome. For the past few days the poor girl has been roosting on top of the watering can to escape the wrath of evil Athena. At night she roosts with the other ladies but is often found the next day with more blood on her wound, which means little Delilah is being pecked at while roosting.  We’ve been putting anti-picking lotion and a special spray that uses blue dye to detract the other hens from Delilah.  Apparently evil chickens like Athena can see beyond our tricks.

Look at those evil eyes.

Laura did some reading and learned that sometimes a flock of hens without a rooster can develop aggressive behavior toward one another.  To put it nicely, one of the hens may try and step up to rooster status.  The gender confusion  isn’t pretty… obviously.   Darn.  So now what? We have to reestablish the pecking order. Currently, Delilah and Manola are happily in the coop while Athena is locked in the basement, which we hope feels like chicken prison. She’s been in seclusion since Sunday, and we’re going to put her back in the coop tomorrow.   The idea is that if we remove the overly dominant rooster wannabe, Athena, then all  the chickens will use their tiny little chicken brains to forget about the pecking order.  With a clean slate they could return to a happy flock of three.  Our plan is to slip her in at night which will hopefully make the other ladies think she’s part of their flock… cross your fingers this works. If it doesn’t, we will reduce our flock to two… and we’re not sure who’s going.

Athena is ashamed. As she should be.

Advertisement