How did your flock annoy you today?

[McChooky]

I buy 2 or 3 of each breed .They tend to get along better and hang out together longer .Birds of a feather do flock together Seriously.I recently used a broody hen to hatch some chicks.All of the leghorns hangout together.The one chick that hatched from a brown egg is a straggler (loner)

 

[BDutch]

The hen seemed to be getting along fine with the other four across the hardware cloth, so today I tried putting her and one of the four together in a different pen on neutral ground to see how they got along. They didn't. She attacked the other hen. Not a "get out of my space" attack but a "I'm going to kill you" attack. Back in her own pen she went.

The EE who kicks is now also being ripped up by her group so I had to remove her to her own pen, too. She has stopped laying.

Now we have a flock of four, a flock of three, another flock of three, a flock of one and another flock of one. The heat is coming back soon and I cannot manage five different pens in the heat. Just one pen is hard enough. I'll have to come up with some other solution. The only hens who get along well with each other are the flock of four and they don't lay anymore.

Are you sure the fighting is going way beyond establishing the pecking order?
Maybe try to open everything up and only interfere if blood is drawn? Let the chickens decide for themselves where they want to sleep.

If it doesn’t work, can you make a video and post it on YouTube or Vimeo. ?

 

[EmmaDonovan]

It's been a 21-month-long drama. I'm trying not to complain about it so often, I think people are tired of hearing it.

 

[McChooky]

It's been a 21-month-long drama. I'm trying not to complain about it so often, I think people are tired of hearing it.

After the 2nd year I added a new breed to my flock plus 2 cockerels. It caused me nothing but headaches for 2 years solid.I got rid of half of them and everything's better now.Lesson learned.

 

[EmmaDonovan]

After the 2nd year I added a new breed to my flock plus 2 cockerels. It caused me nothing but headaches for 2 years solid.I got rid of half of them and everything's better now.Lesson learned.

Did you rehome them or harvest them?

 

[McChooky]

After the 2nd year I added a new breed to my flock plus 2 cockerels. It caused me nothing but headaches for 2 years solid.I got rid of half of them and everything's better now.Lesson learned.

I totally understand.I was ready to get rid of all of mine to get a minutes peace

 

[McChooky]

Did you rehome them or harvest them?

I wasn't concerned about the $$ I rehomed them to a friend

 

[McChooky]

I wasn't concerned about the $$ I rehomed them to a friend

I ordered 12 leghorns 2 ameraucanas, 2 welsummers and 2 cockerels. Already had around 12 hens so I gave away 5 hens to make room for the new ones.Skip forward the new ones took over the coop and chased all the older ones off.They also fought among each other too so I had to get rid of at least 5 of them.Predators got 2 early on.Now half my original flock gets along with them and the ones who don't have their own flock.90% of the problem is chickens need a lot of room unlike what many people say.I free range my chickens everyday now.Keeping them contained is the #1 cause of problems

 

[EmmaDonovan]

We've fed them very carefully so I'm leaning towards harvesting so we can use the meat and organs for our dogs and the bones for broth. I've harvested chickens before but I don't like to do it.

My friend always has her husband do it and I thought about asking him but he's away for work right now. Also he breaks their necks and I don't like that method.

 

[McChooky]

I've got one that decided to hatch chicks this year. I gave her some eggs. She stayed right with them for 3 months .She got an impacted crop so I put her inside and treated her and released her after she got better (3 days) .Now she insists on coming inside everyday.(I thought she wanted to be a house chicken) I started panicking until I found 5 eggs in my bedroom under the bookcase