Bullying Hens

[jennyl]

We recently were given 2 rhode island reds (about a year old) and 2 silkies (a few months old) that have all lived together. We were told that they get along, but the reds constantly pick on the silkies. They don't let them eat or drink while in the coop and are always pecking at them. The coop is plenty big enough (bigger than their last coop), but it is driving us insane trying to control the bullying. The silkies will hide in the nesting box until the reds are let out to free range, but we don't want them out all day while we are gone. Is this unusual for both reds to pick on them? The silkies are sweet and friendly (easy to handle and good for the kids), I would hate to get rid of them since they are the ones being bullied. However, the reds are good layers so we want to keep them too. To build another coop or separate them seems a little extreme since we only have four chickens, but I feel like it is torture to leave them in together. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

 

[chooks4life]

Hello and

While it may seem extreme to build another coop, one cage is not enough if you have more than one chicken. Sooner or later you will always end up needing another cage, generally at the most inconvenient time and due to emergency with one or more lives at stake. I would recommend you put 'make/get another cage & run' on your to-do list. Plus, 'chicken math' will likely strike and you'll need that extra coop.

It doesn't have to be huge. It can in fact be tiny; say, just enough to house two tiny Silkies. I made some little coops with sheltered areas, small runs, etc where birds can temporarily live while brooding or rearing chicks, for example, and most of them I made mobile or they were mobile due to their size and weight. It can be so small you have to lift the lid to get to them, another cage and run doesn't have to be any massive undertaking, but it is a necessity. If your yard is big enough you can have the Silkies at one end and the big hens at the other. Left to their own devices, birds of a feather/ breed/ age/ clutch tend to flock together and will roam in isolated little groups of their friends and family only.

If you get rid of victims you're keeping bullies, so the problem of bullying is not solved. Bullying is often just a neurotic obsessive behavior we've bred into some lines, not actually based on anything justifiable nor comparable to wild animals; quite often the victim's only fault is that they were not able to strike back. In the wild bullying is generally due to the victim being ill or injured, but in domesticity it is very often just due to the abnormal mentality of the attacker, nothing to do with the victim.

The defining characteristic of bullies is that they make victims so as long as you have more animals the bullies will find someone to abuse. If you only keep bullies, they will even bully other bullies and you end up with a very aggressive flock. If you keep the bullies' victims though you can end up with a very peaceful flock, though some victims will reveal themselves as bullies if given a chance. Most don't though, but there are normal hierarchy squabbles and severe kill-attempt battles too and it's important to distinguish between the two. Bullying is based on a mindset which you are unlikely to be able to alter in their lifetimes. In this case I would guess your adults are bullies as I highly doubt any 2 month old Silkie is offering fully grown large fowl hierarchy dispute challenges.

Depending on the severity of the bullying, you may be able to help settle things. But if they're chasing the Silkies, going out of their way to attack them, you're best off removing the Silkies for their own sakes. That's bullying and left long enough it can result in death or maiming. Some chickens will be so stressed by bullying they stop eating or their immune system becomes weak and they die from illnesses they should have survived. Stress is potentially a killer.

In this case, you have two adult and laying hens who have suddenly been put into a new situation along with two weird and fluffy children. Moving to a new situation alone can provoke a hierarchy reshuffle. As well as that, adult chickens rarely actually like living with 'children'/juveniles that aren't their own, and even if they were their own chicks they'd likely be less tolerant of them at this age. The weirdness of Silkies and their hairdos, preventing them from easily seeing alphas walking up behind them, makes them prime targets for most 'normal'-type birds, as they not only look weird but act like they're blind or rudely oblivious to the alphas. They often get treated like the freaks they are among birds not used to them. If you were told they get along but they're not, it's unlikely that this just started now. Maybe the other person's idea of 'getting along' is 'well, they're not dead yet, so...'

Anyway, I think your best bet is just to make some other little pen for the Silkies and have them sleep elsewhere. They may be able to free range during the day in the same yard as the others without interference from the other hens; sometimes laying hens don't want to share coops with unrelated individuals as their instincts may tell them to clear the territory for their own future chicks. The coop is 'home' territory, not neutral ground. Whoever is currently alpha owns it and considers it home. Everybody else is there on sufferance.

Best wishes.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t know how old your “few months old” Silkies are. That’s almost certainly the key to what is going on, though some chickens do react to Silkies or chickens like Polish with the top-knots being different. When they are raised together, chickens normally get along without too many problems, but when you go through an integration it can get rough. If you have all females there are a couple of different things at play.

One is the right to exist. Chickens know who belongs in their flock and may protect their territory from intruders. This does not happen all the time but it happens often enough to be a concern. A good way to get them used to each other is to house them side by side for a week or more so they get used to seeing each other. If you are going to be integrating chickens a separate facility where they can see each other is practically a requirement. Once you do integrate them, especially if they are young, having a separate sleeping place at night tends to cut down the drama dramatically also. Since yours already knew each other this is not likely your problem.

The other thing is that the mature chickens outrank immature chickens in the pecking order. When two chickens meet that don’t know each other, they have to determine where they rank in the pecking order. If they have sufficient room what normally happens is that one chicken pecks or tries to intimidate the other. If the weaker runs away, there may be some chasing but after a few times of this happening the pecking order gets established. If the chicken does not run away, that is a challenge and it can get violent. Usually one chicken quickly learns it’s better to run than fight, but if it can’t get away because of lack of room or it gets trapped against a fence or in a corner, the winner doesn’t know it has won and keeps attacking. Often the loser just lays down and takes the punishment instead of fighting back. That can lead to serious injury or death. If you have enough room for them to run away this usually ends OK but tight space makes it really dangerous.

With immature chicks like you have, if a chick invades the personal space of a more mature hen, the older one will peck to teach the chick to stay out of her personal space. Usually the chicks learn really quickly to avoid the older hens. That sounds like what yours are trying do. They just form a separate flock until they mature enough to force their way into the pecking order. Then they normally merge to form one flock.

When you add or take away members of the flock or move them like you did, you shake up the existing pecking order and it needs to be reestablished. That may be part of what is going on. It’s also likely your management techniques are different than the previous owner. You keep them locked up together so the chicks can’t avoid the older ones like they were or they don’t have good hiding places to avoid the older chickens. If your roosts are high enough it is pretty common for the younger chickens to spend a lot of time on the roosts so the older ones don’t beat them up. Or they hide in or under things.


In your situation, provide as much space as you can. Also provide separate eating and drinking places so the younger ones don’t have to challenge the older to eat and drink. Don’t leave them locked together where the chicks can’t avoid the older ones any more than you have to. Coop size by itself is not the critic space factor. It’s how much room they have in total (might be coop plus run) when they are awake that matters.

Good luck with it.

 

[jennyl]

Thank you both for your help. It is funny because some people have told me that having chickens is the easiest animal to have and that they are not complex....I have to disagree, especially after reading some information. For now we have separated the silkies and laying hens and things seem to be happier (especially for the silkies Now they both have plenty of room, food and water!

 

[chooks4life]

Chickens are one of the most complicated animals to learn about. I've had horses, cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, cats, reptiles, native animals, spiders and other insects, fish, the list goes on.... And chooks may well be the most complicated species I've kept so far. :/

Now I'm scratching the surface of genetics and one thing that stands out is that even the world renowned experts frequently use the word 'unfortunately' to preface discussions about the difficulty of trying to sort out genetics. The good news is that so many people are contributing to the collective knowledge all the time; it's a fair bit of a grass roots sort of thing in some ways.

About whether or not they're the easiest to keep, as opposed to learn about, well, some people strike it lucky one way or another and either never have problems or never notice them, or never realize they're problems; and some others get thrown in the deep end and everything that can go wrong does. So far, I've been thrown into the intermediate depth, I think. Some fairly serious things have gone wrong (bad genes, Mareks') but never to the extent some other folks have had to handle.

Most people telling you they've never had problems with chooks actually have problems, but as a fellow chook-keeper recently told me, 'they died of old age'. In the prime of their lives, that is, quite young. Many people simply don't see the problems so they make it sound easier than those who pay a close eye to their animals' states.

Also, X2 what Ridgerunner said, separating them completely will make them likelier harder to reintroduce. Just something to keep an eye on.

Best wishes.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Chickens can be extremely easy or they can be fairly challenging. For thousands of years small farmers would keep a free ranging flock of chickens. Those chickens fed themselves during the good weather months, laid eggs, provided meat, and hatched their own chicks. The farmer would feed them in the winter, provide water when the world was frozen, provide a place for them to lay eggs and maybe sleep (sometimes they slept in trees) and was vigilant about predators. I grew up on one of those farms.

Occasionally you might lose one to a predator but in our case that was extremely rare. Occasionally you might need to treat for mites, lice, or worms, but again that was fairly rare. You don’t treat unless you have a reason to treat. You may not get extremely big chickens because you want a chicken that can feed itself, but you could still get a meal for 5 kids and 2 adults out of it. The hens may not lay an extra double huge egg every day, but they laid nice eggs pretty often. If a hen went broody, you mark a dozen eggs, put them under her, check once a day for any new eggs, and otherwise stay out of her way. The chickens themselves chose who they got to mate with so you did get a nice mix of colors and patterns but you certainly did not get show chickens. What could be easier than a chicken that practically took care of itself?

But most people on this forum can’t manage them that way. I can’t mainly due to predator pressure. If you keep them caged up where you have to provide all their needs, want nice big fluffy show or showy chickens, want lots of double extra huge eggs, want to handle them and treat them like pets, it can get intense. It’s our unique conditions and goals that make it hard, not just that they are chickens.