Eggstreme Daily Drama with newly laying hens

[PeepOverlord]

Ok I take it back about the RIRs being nice, or normal. Two of the four have begun squatting on eggs for half the day (anyone's eggs, the more the better) and if I or another chicken even go in the henhouse - they puff up, start making horrid screechy noises and act highly aggressive.
Bad chickens!! No treaties for you!

 

[Hopelives07]

Wow. I would of never thought...

 

[PeepOverlord]

More Crazy from the Fail Farm:
One weirdo is now occassionally laying an egg at night. Not sure if it's dumping the egg from the roost and it's landing on the floor (in nearly a foot of shavings and pine needles) or if the hen is laying it directly on the floor (??) By the color of the egg, its not a RIR.

Karen (my fail chicken) randomly goes into the hen house and sits on other hen's eggs for about an hour, then she leaves. She'll do this several times a day. Sometimes. Or not at all.
Some days she doesn't even wait for the other hen to leave; she sits right on the other hen *and* her egg.
Kah's new favorite thing to do is fly up onto my back every time I bend over, and then loudly brag about it. Weeding is all kinds of ridiculous, becasue she keeps falling off.

The b1tchy RIR sometimes pushes/kicks other RIR's eggs out of a nest box...which stresses Fluffy (BR) and she runs in/out of the hen house, mumbling loudly, before rolling them into a pile and sitting on them.

 

[Ascholten]

How's the drama progressing? Have they finally learned to tolerate each other yet or still bickering at full volume?

Luckily I have not had 'this' drama, the worse I have seen is when 3 of them decide they NEED to lay all at the same time and all want to climb in the box at once. First it's a fight over who gets the left corner, then it's a squabble in which way the monkey in the middle is allowed to face... even though the other two are facing the walls and their butts are to her.

This begs me to ask, if you kept them locked up for a few days, they'd HAVE to use the egg box right? I mean, can she hold it in that long? Don't they just kind of pop out after a while, chickie like it or not?

Aaron

 

[rosemarythyme]

This begs me to ask, if you kept them locked up for a few days, they'd HAVE to use the egg box right? I mean, can she hold it in that long? Don't they just kind of pop out after a while, chickie like it or not?

Yes they need to lay at some point, even if they're locked up and don't like it.