The big chicken merger has commenced. I started last night.. The older chickens are being bullies and territorial and the new chickens are being properly subservient and cautiously huddling together. The older chickens will not let the young ones eat from the trays yet but I have extra food on the ground they can scratch for and today after bridge I will let them all out in the garden together to free range.
Not only did I want them closer in size before combining, the young chickens were on a different feed. The blurry chicken in the middle is one of the older hens and you can see the younger one the right is rapidly catching up. The "girl" on the left is one of the new chickens and it has turned out to be a "guy" I have been spending time sitting in the coop just watching the whole social drama unfold..... It's going as well as I could hope for at this point... no blood drawn as yet..
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4 comments:
love to here the sound of chickens clucking away, my neighbour used to keep them and at the back of me 2 houses had them but the council has objected, at the back they did have them on some waste ground, do miss the clucking.My neighbour also got rid of his as was finding it too much with a wife he cares for and he is not getting any younger, also miss the eggs he used to share when he had too many.
This is always a nail bitter for me too. 4 of my 21 chicks turned out to be guys and they are starting to gang up on my three old hens, so I think they need to head off to the Amish market where they will make some Sunday roasters for me.
Wow, they are so much bigger than the last picture. I hope they work things out soon. We finally had some rain here - a couple of times and we're supposed to get some more. It may be too late for some of the farmers - the county next door has declared an agricultural disaster.
I should resist saying that there obviously is a pecking order with chickens (but you see that I didn't)
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