Mean Girls 2

The reign of terror continues in my backyard. Of course it does. Chicks thrive on drama.

Left to right: Maran, Rhode Island Red, and two Buff Orpingtons.

It's been two weeks since I integrated my ten week old pullets with my existing flock of one year old laying hens, and I first understood with drastic certainty what exactly the term "Pecking Order" meant. As with popular teenage girls there was absolutely no maternal instinct from the Queen Bees to the Wannabes; my redhead, a gorgeous, slender Rhode Island Red that had previously been my favorite chick quickly transformed herself into my most despised as she showed her true, vile colors, snatching one of the new girls bald headed and leaving her in a bloody heap.

You think you can sleep on my roost and just walk into my coop like you own this piece? This is MY HOUSE! MY HOUSE!

I had read extensively about techniques to integrate new pullets into an existing flock (see chapter one of the Mean Girls Saga) but I was utterly unprepared for exactly how vicious the Queen Bees were going to be, and how committed they were going to be to continuing their enduring reign of terror. For the first weekend I kept my newly integrated flock (a black and white Maran, Rhode Island Red, and brown and gold Welsummer, with two blonde Buff Orpington pullets) in a large fenced off portion of the back yard, probably three times the amount of space they had access to in their range, with plenty of greens and flowers from the garden, sunflower seeds, extra food and scratch, and all the caterpillars I could find. Even with all this entertainment to keep them busy--a virtual ASB smorgasbord of spirit week activities!--the Queen Bees continued to torment the new girls mercilessly. The pullets huddled miserably in corners around the yard behind potted plants and between fence posts, anywhere they could squeeze themselves in that the other hens couldn't get to them. The smaller of the two Orp pullets took to just squawking in despair, digging herself a belly hole and hiding her head.

I can't see you, you're not there, this is my happy place. THIS IS MY HAPPY PLACE!

The bigger of the two teenagers every once in a while would go for some food or water and one or the other of the big chicks would peck her mercilessly back into her corner and peck at her head while she shrieked in terror.

Yeah. It was a little disconcerting. 

Worse was night time. The big chicks refused to allow the littles onto the roosts and drove them, screaming into the space under the feeder. For the entire weekend I woke up in a cold sweat at 5 a.m., hurrying down to the coop to try to beat the sun and the chickens' internal alarm clock to the next installment of "Saw VII--Feathers and Blood". If I was slow I'd come down to the coop shaking off its supports as the big hens kicked the living crap out of the little ones. I'd let the big ones out of the coop into the yard. The Rhode Island Red would linger inside the coop, violently teaching the little ones painful lessons, about, you know. Living, or breathing the same air, moving, continuing to exist...

Did I SAY she could drink out of the waterer that I. DRINK FROM? 

The littles took to hiding in the relative safety of the nest box, where they would continually be brutalized by the older hens but at least they could stay out of sight and mind for most of the day. When I went to check on them on the third day both of the littles had free bleeding wounds on the back of their heads and over their beaks and the bigger of the two baby chicks was missing huge patches of her feathers. When the littles did emerge from the coop it was because one of my three formerly beautiful, gentle, beloved cooing adult hens would transform into a brutal, cruel and merciless sadist, sauntering up into the coop to drive the littles out where the other two were waiting in a horrifying gauntlet. The ringleader, almost always the Rhode Island Red, would drive the baby chicks down the line and the other two would viciously peck her until she made it past them into a corner; but with them blocking her exit, she'd have no choice but to run past them again into the abattoir, where the Redhead was waiting to turn her around and make her run back in again under the knife-sharp beaks. When the little chicks weren't out the big ones LITERALLY SHARPENED THEIR BEAKS on the concrete.

Not only was the Rode Island Red asserting her dominance over the little chicks, she had taken to letting us know that she was the boss over EVERYTHING, including me. When I broke up one of their gang fights she stalked over to me aggressively and angrily pecked at me. I reached down to thump her on the head but she dodged and pecked my foot hard enough to draw blood. 

You just did what?! Oh, no, sweetie. It just got a whole lot easier to talk about culling. 

I knew there was a pecking order being reset and the birds had to figure it out; but it was only as I started another day listening to the bone-chilling Screaming of the Chicks that realized just how little information there was in the books I'd read about chicken care on integrating new pullets into an existing flock--all variations on the same theme. "Little chicks will have a hard time of it, there's no way around it." Uh...ok. But how many days do I have to listen to them screaming? Two? Twenty? The rest of my life? WHEN? The books were silent on the timeline. 

My books failing me, I remembered a friend who also had chickens, and who I recalled had put down one hen for (killing?) another in the flock; it occurred to me it might have been during flock integration. He had a ton of great suggestions including something cool called a Flock Block, basically a suet cake filled with seeds and treats to keep the big chicks busy; but I had already spent a week throwing out everything I could think of into the chicken yard and it hadn't stopped the Queen Bees from thrashing the little guys into quivering messes. He did say though that if the little chicks were bleeding, the other chickens would respond to the color red and wouldn't be able to resist pecking at it; and he suggested trying to isolate the ringleader to see if that would force her to have to get back into the pecking order herself. 

It was hard to isolate the little chicks, knowing they'd have to start their horrors all over again once I integrated them again, but time to heal and grow bigger seemed like an okay temporary plan. In the morning I let the big hens out of the coop and then closed the coop door behind them, sealing the little chicks safely inside. That night I let them all out to free range but isolated the Rhode Island Red. She was frantic, running back and forth inside her enclosure furiously pecking at the wire and squawking indignantly. Her little pal the black and white Maran immediately took up the mantle of the Queeniest Bee and started harassing the little chicks on her behalf, going so far as to lunge at me while I was locking the run. I knocked her out of the way with a nudge and she looked up at me balefully, but backed off. In her little isolation box the Rhode Island Red watched it all with malevolent intelligence, plotting and planning, watching and waiting. That night, we waited for full dark before letting the hens into their coop (chickens have a powerful roosting instinct that drives them toward high shelter when dusk falls and become frantic when they're denied it), and when we finally did let them inside, they went in quietly . We only heard a single alarmed squawk from one of the littles and then everything was still except for their sweet cooing. 

Could it be that easy? Isolate the ringleader and take away her power? God. They should make a movie out of this...

Well, it wasn't quite that easy. It took almost two weeks for the little guys to fully heal their open wounds, and the feathers are just starting to come back on the little girl that was snatched bald, leaving her head looking a little scabrous. But this week for the first time, although the little chicks still took care to stay well out of the way of the big ones, the little chicks actually ventured out into the main area; partook of some of the greens I'd thrown down for the whole flock; walked around in the sunshine; generally lived with some semblance of normalcy. The Rhode Island Red is still the boss bitch but she's reclaimed a healthy respect for humans and after being ungently disciplined for her naughty pecking behaviors she stays out of our way; while the other two adult hens are even more submissive to us, dropping down into a squatting position and spreading their wings when we approach. For the most part they ignore the littles and bedtime is a quiet affair, no more knock down, drag out chick fights. We even managed, finally, to get the big hens to stay on the roosts when we set the little ones up there with them. If you're keeping track, that was one week of failure, two weeks of recuperation, and one week of growing pains to a sort of uneasy truce. No one's bleeding, and I only occasionally have to close my windows because they're screaming at each other. 

Yay, success. No one's dead.