Hazel "Hottie Hazel" update
Seeing Hazel all upset while getting chased and tackled by Shehnai has been hard but it might be happening less. Possibly now there’s some better news - Hazel is figuring out strategies, and maybe, just maybe, Shehnai is also learning the ropes and acting a little less desperate.
I haven’t seen much lately how Hazel gets into the coop at night, and I know Shehnai hangs around that coop knowing she will be there, and he's dying to get a little nookie in before bed. Frankly I have left before then so I don't have to see it.
But I have observed that the mornings are going better for her through a new strategy she's implementing.
After starting the night on the roost bars snuggled with the other Bigs, at some point she slips into a nestbox by morning. She stays there in the coop for about two hours after the pop door opens. The other day when I tried feeding her there (because there was no feeder where she was spending her days) she was at first in a certain state, like a trance-meditative state. She made very small and low peep vocalizations to me, not her usual volume. Maybe it was a “Shh! I'm hiding! Don’t give me away! I’m not really here, and I don't see you either!” state. So now I’m leaving her alone and just watching by camera. She dozes, but wakes and is very alert to any chicken sounds around the coop. Mostly she sits stock still, and like Elmer Fudd she stays vairwee, vairwee quiet. Totally unmoving and as un-detectable as possible.
This is her today, she only had just moved her head and started looking around. She left the coop at about 8:30 (fifteen minutes later)
Meanwhile the gangs had finished eating and drinking near that coop for the morning, and went up to the rhododendron bushes for a morning rest. I'm pleased to see them pretty close together.
Later, here she is - that dark blob next to the tripod leg. Most everyone has moved away and she is here by herself.
I didn't see how she did her move from the coop to the rhododendron, but it was quiet. I've got a feeder up there for her, I hear her using it through the day, so she’s eating when she wants now. This large circular space around the bushes works for her with Shehnai. She uses the open space with easy running on the upper woodland ground (versus the weedy field below the rhododendron). There are three trees, the waterer & feeder, and the big rhododendron bush to dodge around.
Shehnai does chase her out of there but she usually finds a Buff Orpington nearby, plus he's not so crazy after the morning time. He also gives up more easily at these times, maybe in general, as if he is learning the ropes a little. Hazel isn't as panicked as she was and is making some smarter moves when she runs. So maybe they both are learning the dance.
But she’s not using the under-pallet idea, I placed it just below the rhododendrons. Maybe it’s still too low? It's about ten inches above the ground. Other chickens have gone under there partially with a crouch, but nobody has walked through under it. Needs to be higher? No photo, sorry...
Diane Update
She is my shadow, pecking my ankles when I walk, hanging around closely most of the time. I am growing to like her constant company and am trying to just not give her the opportunity to bite my hands or arms when possible. Yesterday when I laid down on my side on a pallet near the rhododendrons to let everyone inspect and walk on me she got up on my hip and sat there for a long time.
Before that I saw a pullet peck her neck, twice, and she didn’t move, just stood quietly. She’s making friends? Diane has been sleeping in the pullets’ coop at least a couple of nights now and then, and did again last night.
Two of the bolder pullets boss Hazel around and Hazel is afraid of them. Unfortunately they have been inadvertent herders / blockers when Shehnai chases her. Was this pullet bossing Diane? It did not look like it. Usually Diane is feared and does the pushing/ chasing. So - fair to say she is making friends, or becoming accepted as Queen Of The Littles?
Here she moved even closer to the pullets and nobody ran away, one pullet is to her left in fact.
