The Chickens Graduate to the First Floor

protecting the pullets

There is a reason why “henpecked” is a word. No matter how nice your chickens are, no matte how sweet and gentle, how content - when you introduce them to juvenile hens they become right a-holes.

A day after my last chick update, when I reported and recorded the three of them all safe and happy on the upper shelf of the henhouse, one of the brown one’s (still puff-coated at that moment) somehow disappeared from the coop.

Ruling out an external predator, I immediately suspected this crew:

I looked all around the coop floor for chick remains and found nothing obvious. I looked more closely for traces - a beak? a claw? - still nothing. Then I thought I heard the “SHER! SHER!” sound that a young chicken makes when it is separated from its crew. I stood in the backyard and listened, thinking I might have heard it again, coming from another yard. I looked and listened, but the late-April sounds of juvenile birds seemed to come from all directions, confusing the matter.

I enlisted my sons, who were dubious of finding a three-inch tall chick in the wide world. “We have to triangulate” I told them, not sure precisely what that meant, but wanting to sound like I had a plan.

It worked! We cased the yard separately, and my younger son caught a glimpse of something moving among the netting under the back porch. He and I zeroed in and we caught her. She had a nasty wound between her wings (very likely inflicted by a hen’s cruel beak). I put her back in with her sisters and she immediately ate and drank and, aside from the wound, seemed a-ok.

I shored up all the cracks and openings that she could have squeezed through, and within a couple of weeks, her wound was healed up and feathered over and all was happy in chick land.

Three weeks later, it was time to give them more room to move, and to start properly acclimating them to the flock. This meant getting them down to the floor of the coop and giving them access to the coop yard. When you allow pullets (young hens) in among the mature birds, it is important to create a place for them to run and hide. I did a sort-of reverse Three Little Pigs, considering building it out of:

• wood (too much fuss)

• polycarbonate panel (still too much fuss)

• cardboard (perfect!)

figuring that as long as it was strong enough to keep the hens at bay, it would do. I didn’t intend for it to look like a castle:

Now, one week later, the young ones are venturing out into the coop yard, where they take shelter among the lilies and multiflora rose

Every so often I hear the SHER! SHER!, and know that one or more of the big ladies has forced a little one to separate from her crew, most likely chasing her around the yard and giving a peck now and again for good measure. When the big ones do this, they get a nasty, angry expression on their faces - unpleasant to look at, for humans as well as pullets.

I reassure myself that the big girls are training them to be nimble footed and brave of heart, which could perhaps serve them well if they ever encounter other predators - but I still don’t think its very nice.