Mean Girl and White Feather

It’s been a very dry summer–at least for us. On radar, we often watch large areas of rain go right past us without hitting us. Because of the lack of rain, I have to go out ever day to water EJ’s vegetable garden and my herb garden. That’s a lot of work because I have to move the sprinkler every 30 minutes or so to cover all the garden areas. Our gardens are not huge, but our sprinkler is small so it takes me several hours. However, we finally got some steady rain last night and this morning. This afternoon we can see some blue among the clouds, but the forecast says that we could get scattered showers this evening. I hope so.

The good thing about this summer is that it’s been mostly pleasantly cool so it’s been comfortable to work and sleep. Now watch: Because I said that, we will now get hit with very hot and humid weather.

Shortly after we got our first flock of chicks seven years ago, I read that chickens make the humans who care for them into an honorary members of their flock. When a chicken–usually a rooster–is “mean,” it’s because it thinks it outranks you and is trying to get you back under its dominance. For that reason, I’ve never put up with sass. If any act a little sassy, I gently but firmly nudge it away so it understands that it is below ME in the pecking order. Because they know their rank, my chickens have always been respectful toward me. Usually my chickens get along with each other as well. They sometimes briefly peck at each other to keep the lower-ranking ones in line, but it doesn’t last long. Since the pecking order is the way their “society” works, I don’t interfere.

Among the little chicks we got last year was a female chick that was a bit more aggressive than usual. Even as a little one she would sometimes leap and flab her wings at me to scare me. I’d flick my finger at her and she remained mostly respectful toward me. I quickly stop her sassiness if she tries. However, she’s grown up to be a bit bossy to the other chickens. I think of her as the stereotypical “mean girl” who bullies others. She recently started bullying one of the other hens. It wasn’t a simple peck and it seemed a prolonged bullying.

All of our chickens are Rhode Island or New Hampshire Reds which pretty much look identical to each other. However, quite a few months ago, one of the hens, the Mean Girl’s victim, has developed white feathers among the red ones. I’m wondering if she’s from our first flock and getting old, and maybe that’s why Mean Girl is bullying her, but none of the others have white feathers, even those from the first flock. I don’t know why this hen does but it’s quite pretty. It makes her unique.

Mean Girl has been bullying White Feather so constantly that White Feather tried to hide from her. I didn’t even know if Mean Girl let White Feather access the food and water. I considered how to solve the problem and I finally decided to build a door for one of the old wooden doghouses inside the coop. I cut a piece of sturdy cattle panel down to door size. We had originally used cattle panels for our dog Danny’s pen (he’s now deceased) when we lived downstate; we brought them with us when we moved and have repurposed them to make gates, trellis, and whatever else we needed. The squares of a cattle panel are big enough that a chicken can get through so I covered the panel with flimsier chicken wire that is much smaller. Then I hammered in large staples for hinges. I twisted a thick wire into a “latch,” and hammered in a nail that I could hook the wire on to keep the door closed.

Once I had the dog house door completed, I put White Feather in it with food, water, and treats of grass that I pull up for her every day. Ideally, Mean Girl should have been the one shut away, but I don’t think White Feather minds being in a protected place. She seemed so terrorized that I wasn’t sure she was going to make it but I check every day and she’s still alive. She’s sitting up although she still seems unusually docile. I hope she makes it.

In the future, I plan to use that dog house for any little chicks we get or raise until they are old enough to join the adult flock. We actually got an incubator this Spring intending to hatch our own eggs, but our chickens are laying so many eggs this year that we have an over-abundance. So I will wait for another year or two before I use the incubator.