OS Singlies - We Do It Our Way!

LavenderBees

It's similar whenever you introduce a new animal to an existing hierarchy, but bloomin heck, I now know the origin of "getting it in the neck" now too, along with all the other "henny" phrases.

Bluebelle definitely seems more settled and accepting this afternoon, but Coco is on a one hen mission to rid the run of all interlopers. Having said that, I've just spent the last couple of hours encouraging the newbies to eat from my hand (it didn't take long for them to get the confidence, bless them, and at least I now know they've eaten well), and although there have been skirmishes, overall, it feels a little less fraught. Hope it's not wishful thinking on my behalf :eek:

Poor Maisie was blissfully enjoying a dust bath, eyes closed, peeping away with happiness (she still sounds like a young chick ) and horrible Coco took a long look with narrowed eyes (I swear), and then attacked :eek:.

One of the old timers on the lottie came to chat, and assured me that this will be all settled down in a couple of days. I hope so. My nerves can't stand this for much longer! I am spraying the new girls with anti-peck spray and trying all the little tricks suggested on various sites...fingers crossed.

Have come away to get on with home chores and have a break. On Monday, I have to go to work, so I can't get used to sitting watching their every move or I'll go mad not knowing what's happening. I need a hen-cam :rotfl:

I'll go back later, and make sure they settle for the night ok. Is teeming down with rain again, but we had a lovely bright sunny and warm afternoon. I've been soaked through 4 times today...not my best day ever, that's for sure.

If things are more settled tomorrow, I may take time to get some photos.

I have told Coco, I'm intending to have roast chicken tomorrow...she was completely unfazed. Talk about being on a power trip :rotfl:

LB xx

moneyistooshorttomention

LB,

Are there are any suitable sprays that can be sprayed straight at chickens on the attack? If not, if you are there when Coco decides to stage an unprovoked attack, then could you spray her with one of those spray water things used in gardens? Maybe that way she will learn "You attack and you get wet"..sort of aversion therapy.

Don't know if that idea would work. No idea how intelligent, or otherwise, chickens are..

LavenderBees

Morning!

I've thought about your suggestion overnight (and bless you for trying to help me!), but these are my pets, and I want them to run to me not from me. Spraying them, I'm sure, yes, some people will, and a bit of water is harmless in itself, but really that's just punishing the chicken for doing what is natural to it...establishing a pecking order. I might hate it, be appalled at the brutal violence of it, but that's my problem, not really hers.

No, the way forward has to be the carrot not the stick - for me, anyway.

So, another few hours research last night, and this morning, I was back at the run before daylight preparing surprises and distractions for them to come out to. yep...in my PJs and wellies....:rotfl:

I've hung a cabbage, a broccoli and a cauli (all from lottie) at various parts of the run, so Coco can't guard them all. While I was doing this, I could see Coco watching me from her roost, so her excited focus was all on the run, not on the M&Ms .

As they came out of the run when the pophole opened, I started to dig up the outside part for them...worms galore (how MSE is that - free food!:money:), and the M&Ms forced their way forward to get their share, which was great to see. :T

Yes, there were skirmishes, but over far quicker, and mostly just warnings - Coco reminding them what she can do to them if she wants to, kind of thing, and also, it has to be said, protecting the food for herself. So, I sprinkled food around again, and moved water so she can't guard it all.

I stayed til 6.30, and, after freshening their bedding and spraying the M&Ms, I've come away, reasonably content that progress seems to be being made.

Keeping this level of distraction going is the difficult part as I'm going to run out of ideas, and I can't honestly keep existing on 4 hrs sleep a night, if that. Work gets in the way, too

I've ordered a chicken ball for their treats to see if they can learn to roll the ball to get their corn out.

And now, really it's up to them. :eek:

I'm so tired, but hyper with anxiety, too. I probably feel like a new mother! No point in going back to bed, so I'm just going to get on with chores, and go back to check on them in an hour or two. I might take my camera...thought it's bloomin raining again

Any other suggestions for distractions and enrichment will be very gratefully received. Chickens are very motivated by food...

LB xx

moneyistooshorttomention

That makes sense to me re scattering food in different locations, so that Coco cant guard it all at once and it makes it easier for her to accept that its not all hers and is "communal food" for them all to share.

I wouldn't imagine chickens are too bright and it may be that if Coco had water sprayed at her from some source apparently unconnected to you (ie some sort of hosepipe or other arrangement that was feet away from you) then it might work as aversion therapy, but she wouldn't connect it with you iyswim??

Maybe there is a way to introduce an aspect that they would all regard as Adversary and band together against "common enemy" and forget about having a pecking order? Again..Don't know how chickens function and how intelligent they are.

Sort of akin to how people war so amongst each other and maybe the only chance there is of everyone stopping fighting between different countries would be in a Star Wars scenario of a very threatening E.T. showing up hovering in our skies and threatening to kill off the lot of us.

Having said that, there was something "most peculiar" and enormous hovering over Moscow in a recent YouTube clip and I cant say I've seen banner worldwide headlines about it. So maybe we wouldn't all co-ordinate notes and decide to put differences to one side and set up a "common front" even then....:( so perhaps chickens wouldn't do a set up a circle of wagons against marauding Indians scenario....

Guess humans are really just a species of animals etc, judging by much human behaviour is a bit primitive and if there is a way to work back from the more primitive behaviour often displayed by many humans then you might find a way...

Almost got me wondering if there are chickens that have a lower than average level of Chicken Intelligence and get their way by throwing their weight around/effing and blinding and threatening physical violence on the one hand. On the other hand, the more intelligent chickens use their minds to out-think the chavvy chickens. Certainly introduced a train of thought for the day...

Hope this resolves soon and you can get some more sleep.

moneyistooshorttomention

I wonder whether another tactic would be akin to one I used with a human being? Years ago, I temporarily had a lodger on a "bed and board" type basis who came from a country where certain basic foods were in short supply even. I was a bit puzzled to start with as to why certain types of food would seem to vanish rather quickly, until I clicked to that and just put so much of this type of food there that there was no way that it could all be hoarded or eaten at once and they got used to the idea that "In England there is plenty of this and so I don't have to 'hoover it all up' the second I spot it".

Of course, this person wasn't a particularly greedy type of person. It might not have worked if they had been. Now wondering if Coco is a particularly greedy hen or one that still has raw feelings of wondering where her next meal is coming from, but once she feels secure that there will always be plenty of food will stop this behaviour once someone else tries to get a mouthful of it?

BookWorm

Morning

I don't have any useful advice re: chickens I'm afraid as never kept them myself. The things you have done this morning like moving the food and water, etc makes sense and maybe the rest is a time thing.

BW

walkers60

I have had the same problem with my chickens when I introduced new ones. In the latest case I sectioned off (with a small house and run inside the main run) so that they could all see each other but couldn't attack. I was expecting more problems but in fact they all got used to each other quite quickly and they were all soon running around together. The older chook had been through it all herself previously and I thought she would be hard to mix but maybe thought she was outnumbered. Chooks are not daft...... well not much... and they do get used to routines. Great time wasters (my time!), I could sit for ages watching them.

As your previous posters suggest: try to put more than one food and drink 'stations' around the run. My old chooks loved dried meal worms (just a few as a treat - or to encourage them to go where I wanted them to go!).

Weeds and vegetables hung up work well. Somewhere I read about hanging a CD up so that it swings in the wind and distracts them. You can buy sprays to deter feather pecking if it gets serious. My case was so bad at one stage that I had to spray chooks with a mauve antiseptic spray as there were actual wounds and blood encourages more pecking. I ended up with half bald, mauve chooks. Not an attractive look, but I didn't tell them that.

I have an unusual 'problem' with my new batch of point-of-lay chooks - they don't like worms. Unheard of in the chicken world! I think worms frighten them. In fact they don't like cabbage etc either - I don't think this stage will last long though. They haven't started laying yet....... any day soon.....

LavenderBees

Nope, I can only repeat that I think it would be wrong to punish Coco for doing what is her natural instinct. Would you like the equivalent of a water canon squirted at you while you are going about your daily biz?

I think you are trying to impose human values (and there's precious few of those, in my view! We are just as out to look after ourselves as chickens are!) on chickens. Chickens are intelligent, in their own way....just not in our way. BUT they are intelligent enough that either at the top or the bottom of the pecking order, they survive.

Coco is already stressed, hence her reaction to the new girls, so to stress her more with punishment isn't going to get good results.The most i will do is isolate her so she is behind a fence but still part of the flock - she simply thought she'd wandered into a different part of the run, and couldn't get back, but that stressed her enough. It worked for Bluebelle in an amazingly short time, but Coco is different. Just like humans, chickens are all different.

She is doing what she knows to do to save herself - though we know she has no need to, she doesn't. She doesn't know about tomorrow, can barely remember yesterday, so she eats for today. She certainly doesn't know there will be food tomorrow. Why would she?

In all animals, the toughest survive, the weakest don't. Chickens are no different, despite having been "domesticated" for years.

I love animal psychology. Am far more interested in it than humans, that's for sure, though we can all draw parallels. I, personally, will get a huge amount of job satisfaction from resolving this with kindness and patience, then if I browbeat a young chicken into being "nicer" to her "sisters".

The trick is to try to think like a chicken - what do they need after food and shelter is satisfied? They need stimulation, distraction, fun...so much better than a water pistol? yes? And really not so different to us, after all.

Time will help...Coco will forget these are strange chickens with strange smells, and they will be part of her flock - lower than her, definitely, but familiar and comforting. I want to get her and them to this point as quickly as possible to reduce the stress on them (and me!!), but it will be with kindness. And if kindness doesn't work, the agressor will have to be rehomed or worse...so kindness has to work.

LB xx

LavenderBees

walkers60 wrote: »

I have had the same problem with my chickens when I introduced new ones. In the latest case I sectioned off (with a small house and run inside the main run) so that they could all see each other but couldn't attack. I was expecting more problems but in fact they all got used to each other quite quickly and they were all soon running around together. The older chook had been through it all herself previously and I thought she would be hard to mix but maybe thought she was outnumbered. Chooks are not daft...... well not much... and they do get used to routines. Great time wasters (my time!), I could sit for ages watching them.

As your previous posters suggest: try to put more than one food and drink 'stations' around the run. My old chooks loved dried meal worms (just a few as a treat - or to encourage them to go where I wanted them to go!).

Weeds and vegetables hung up work well. Somewhere I read about hanging a CD up so that it swings in the wind and distracts them. You can buy sprays to deter feather pecking if it gets serious. My case was so bad at one stage that I had to spray chooks with a mauve antiseptic spray as there were actual wounds and blood encourages more pecking. I ended up with half bald, mauve chooks. Not an attractive look, but I didn't tell them that.

I have an unusual 'problem' with my new batch of point-of-lay chooks - they don't like worms. Unheard of in the chicken world! I think worms frighten them. In fact they don't like cabbage etc either - I don't think this stage will last long though. They haven't started laying yet....... any day soon.....

Yes, I'm working really hard to try to avoid it getting to the point of blood being drawn...I have the purple spray ready...:eek:

Bluebelle and Coco also didn't understand worms at first. The first one they saw, they pulled it apart and then walked away bored. Not Now! It didn't take them long...

:rotfl:

I have a CD and a mirror and another twirly things, and a windmill, and a bench and roosts outside. I honestly can't think of anything else. perhaps, I don't need to. Just need to let them get on with it...my poor babies

JustKeepSwimming_2

:hello: Morning All

Not been around for a while as life has just been stupidly busy, but hoping to catch up now.....

Hope all are doing fine - I have no children this w/e so rushed through all the chores yesterday in the vain hope that I can have a day off not doing very much as I'm ignoring my garden