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- #11
Concord has an interesting history. She is a pied royal purple hen that was in my first group of eggs I hatched, so she was part of the flock that was brooded with chicks and ducks. When I had to rehome the aggressive Guineas to save the chicks and ducklings, I was left with only one remaining Guinea cock (Ghost) with 8 Guinea hens. Concord was a “fringe” girl, she and two other hens were only marginally part of the flock. Although Ghost would breed all of the hens he would chase the fringe girls away too.It is usually the lowest one in the pecking order that does this.
Once I expanded the flock and added more cocks, Concord experienced a meteoric rise in status. For the past few years, she has been attached to one of the most dominant flock cocks (not Ghost) and that seems to have translated to flock dominance for her. It’s interesting that this hasn’t been the case for some of my other hens, where I have other subordinate hens (Violet and Slate) that were partnered with cocks that were dominant at the time, but that didn’t elevate their status with the flock. At any rate, Concord is now one of the most dominant hens in the flock, maybe the most dominant hen. She has also hatched keets in the past so she knows something about them, but as of yesterday was the only bird I saw acting aggressively towards the keets. I’ll be waiting until I see improvement in her behavior before trying to let the keets out with the flock. Attaching pics of Concord next to lavender hen Pearl, who is also very dominant but not so great at hatching keets. Concord next to the keet she hatched but eventually abandoned, Viceroy, who is still in the flock. Last is Concord being a good flock leader to the keets that Welsh added to the flock last year.