Last year, we purchased eight little girls about one week old from our local TS store. All of them Rhode Island Reds. They all got along famously until we built a very nice large chicken house for them to live in as they quickly got bigger within a couple of months and put them into the new large house together. They had been living in a very small coop and it was time to 'move on up'!
It wasn't long that some very undesirable behavior was noted from my favorite pullet, Speckles, so named because she looks like she has lots of little white speckles all over her neck, so pretty and the only one that had that. She soon began chasing her seven sisters around the inside of the new much larger coop, either pulling out their tail feathers or their neck feathers as they each screamed from her bullying them.
There was no recourse but to separate Speckles from her sisters and put her back into her former home, the little coop. Of course there was the same old comforting little light on in it that she was familiar with to keep her company at night. At first, she loudly objected to being separated from her sisters and time and time again, she was given chances to correct her bullying behavior by putting her back in with her sisters but for her only to repeat the unacceptable behavior, to their dismay. The last time she was put back in with them, they all ran and hid from her. They knew what was coming and they were surely right.
So, now, at almost five months old, Speckles resides in the little coop behind the big chicken house, alone. She seems to have adjusted to her solitary confinement, however and doesn't cry out as she did in the beginning when she seemed to long to be with her sisters.
There is the possibility that come spring, she may be given another chance to reunite with them one more time. In the meantime, she is queen of her little coop and gets to have it all to herself.
It wasn't long that some very undesirable behavior was noted from my favorite pullet, Speckles, so named because she looks like she has lots of little white speckles all over her neck, so pretty and the only one that had that. She soon began chasing her seven sisters around the inside of the new much larger coop, either pulling out their tail feathers or their neck feathers as they each screamed from her bullying them.
There was no recourse but to separate Speckles from her sisters and put her back into her former home, the little coop. Of course there was the same old comforting little light on in it that she was familiar with to keep her company at night. At first, she loudly objected to being separated from her sisters and time and time again, she was given chances to correct her bullying behavior by putting her back in with her sisters but for her only to repeat the unacceptable behavior, to their dismay. The last time she was put back in with them, they all ran and hid from her. They knew what was coming and they were surely right.
So, now, at almost five months old, Speckles resides in the little coop behind the big chicken house, alone. She seems to have adjusted to her solitary confinement, however and doesn't cry out as she did in the beginning when she seemed to long to be with her sisters.
There is the possibility that come spring, she may be given another chance to reunite with them one more time. In the meantime, she is queen of her little coop and gets to have it all to herself.