My first time quarantining a chicken

[townchicks]

You might want to get her broodyness broken before you start introduction, since she's being so feisty. So sorry this has gotten so complicated. Good luck.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Given that Dimple seems to be a hardline no-food-and-drink broody unless I keep pulling her out, I'm guessing I will need to set her up for proper broody breaking once the QT is over rather than trying to ride it out some other way?

Yes, just break her, or this is going to continue to be difficult. Even if that means having to cage her in your house/garage/etc to do so.

 

[DonyaQuick]

It's around 85F and humid right now. Ziggy doesn't care and he still wants to melt into my arms for a hug nap. I guess his face is technically made of heat sinks and he doesn't rely on sweat to cool down. He really doesn't care about the sudden temperature spike nearly as much as I was expecting. My hens on the other hand are not very happy, but they are fluffier. I had to hose down their run to give the cooler, damp substrate.

I think I may be making some progress with Dimple. There is a tiled area of the house that always stays very cool. I've set the carrier there for the day and have let her come out to roam around a couple times. There seems to be a lot more of regular Dimple coming through and only periodic outbursts of broody Dimple. She's eating and drinking much better today than prior days.

 

[DonyaQuick]

I discovered today that it's only two hens that are causing the issue with Dimple. Everyone is fine until Dimple starts to go turkey-shaped and make "ork ork ork" noises, then those two are merciless with her and generally rile everyone up. So...on the plus side, that's 3 hens Dimple is totally fine with. So I split them either 3+3 or 4+2, some in the secure area and others in the run extension with the connector closed but food and water in both sides. I then rotated out who was with Dimple based on who I know to be a morning vs. early afternoon layer. That worked really well all day today and got me 4 eggs with happy hens all around. Hopefully this will still work to stop the broody behavior, since I think this will be less stress on her than being stuffed in a small carrier and will also keep her in contact with her flock. I did put her back in the carrier in the house at bedtime but will take her out again first thing tomorrow.

Ziggy's had his last worming dose tonight. Tomorrow afternoon assuming he passes a very thorough inspection, he will be out next to (but not in) the coop. Hopefully the insanity will be coming to a close soon.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Aaaaand it's over. 2 weeks is up, meds and dustings are done, Ziggy looks spotless, and I just can't drag things on any longer and keep it reasonable. His limits of tolerating isolation were being pushed even with me spending as much time as I could with him. My hens were going insane. My dog was going insane. All of that was driving me insane.

First introductions have happened. Ziggy won't be spending tonight in the coop but I'm hopeful he will move in properly quite soon. For some reason my husband and I thought it might be better to introduce Ziggy to one of the calmer hens first and to do it indoors. Our reasoning was that there was a nice big space but also 100% contained and therefore no risk of anybody randomly escaping into the forest. Ziggy stood at one end of the room. The hen stood at the other. She leaned her neck out and made an inquisitive cooing noise, and then Ziggy just lost it. He tried to dance the biggest, fastest dance he possibly could, and he also tried to do that while running over her...on a floor without much traction. I think all my hen saw was a sliding, gyrating ball of legs, wings, and feathers barreling towards her. Needless to say, this was not putting his best foot forward. He was very sad that she ran away.

So, I moved his pen to right near the coop and let him just chill for an hour just watching the ladies. Then I let him chill with them roaming outside around his pen so they could get a better look at him. At one point he chugged food, chugged water, then suddenly danced before he'd really swallowed properly and dribbled wet food bits all over the place. Not very smooth. Shortly after that he got a really close-up view of a butt on the other side of the mesh and had a little squealing freakout. Also not very smooth. But he did calm down pretty quickly. And then finally I just tried opening the doors and...

He hasn't had all 6 out with him at once yet (because of Dimple's issues) but has been out with 4 of them so far; the other 2 I don't really trust to let out with him until they know him better. So far Ziggy has not jumped on or chased anyone. He dances for them, but unfortunately that seems to mostly startle them more than anything right now. He's trying to tone down the dance to be more subtle; I think he'll get there. He's giving them treats while also being watchful and alerting about anything he finds suspicious. I can just walk over any time and pick him up or pick the hens up, no problem. He seems to like watching me feed them. He's such a good boy. Tonight he's sleeping in a smaller just-for-sleeping setup in the spare room with Dimple in her carrier next to his little pen so they can chatter to each other for company.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Ziggy got a test today. He was out in his little enclosure by the coop for half the day and then I decided to try moving him into the run to let him meet those last two flighty hens. I had just gotten him in the run extension and opened up the connector between the two run areas, and then crash boom downpour. There's no warning here with the weather, it just pours down out of nowhere sometimes. Dimple managed to sneak out through the people door just as the heavy rain started and got soaked immediately. Since one of my other hens still has a beef with Dimple, I had to pick between grabbing soggy Dimple outside and monitoring Ziggy, so I grabbed the little wet mop, got soaked myself, and headed back to the house hoping that Ziggy wasn't going to engage clown mode and make a mess of things. As far as I can tell from occasionally spying on him through windows during the storm, he has been all business and no goof!

I'm thinking I will just let him stay in there now and just use the separate enclosure for Dimple and/or the hen picking fights with her. I guess if he goes in the coop at night with the hens then great, otherwise I may have to bring him in at night again depending on the weather. He could sleep and stay dry under the coop if he doesn't want to go in, but anywhere else in there and he could get soaked in lower temperatures and higher winds than I'm happy with. I don't really want to shove him in the coop if he's not comfortable going in on his own.

I also realize I'm not sure how to tell if Dimple is done being broody. I haven't tested giving her coop access again in case she just starts right back up. So far she's not doing the broody sounds or behaviors under normal conditions, but she still goes turkey mode at that one hen when she sees her stomping over to pick a fight.

 

[townchicks]

No end to the drama. Sounds like Ziggy is doing great, though. One way I can tell if my Java is done being broody, is to feel between her legs. When she's broody it feels really hot. When she's not, it feels just like the rest of her body.

 

[DonyaQuick]

One way I can tell if my Java is done being broody, is to feel between her legs. When she's broody it feels really hot. When she's not, it feels just like the rest of her body.

Oh, nice! I remember now when I first picked Dimple up and realized she was an angry little ball that she felt really hot underneath. I wondered what was up with that at the time but then it completely slipped my mind until now. She does seem cooler this evening, but I will go do a hand temperature check on another hen as a point of comparison before trying to put her back.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Dimple appears to be over being broody! I swapped her for the bully this evening to see if that will work to get rid of the aggression between those two. I also removed the ceramic eggs I normally have in the nest boxes just to be safe. Fingers crossed I don't find an angry pinecone in a nest box tomorrow morning.

Also, I never thought I would say this, but Ziggy is trying to do his job too well, too fast. He somehow knew exactly when and where to go to bed without having set foot in the coop before bedtime. I have a whole separate thread on bedtime shenanigans with my hens so I was really hoping he would help call everyone to bed properly. And indeed, he went in and tried to call the girls to bed...but they immediately went to the other end of the enclosure as if to say "not a chance." I tried loading them all in with him. I got 4 out of 5 in, added the 5th and it caused some kind of chaos bomb to go off, so I let them all spill back out again. Ziggy obviously can't go in the coop with them just yet, so I took him out, loaded the hens back in, and shut the door. I thought maybe he would sleep in the secure area below them, but it didn't work either. He got so upset with the whole thing that he gave me his "hug please" gesture and then went total limp noodle and gave up. He didn't even care about the dog on the way back into the house. Poor guy! I hope he keeps trying. He has that one grumpy hen in the carrier for company tonight at least, and one of the others is definitely taking a liking to him but is still shy about it.

 

[DonyaQuick]

Some good and some bad is happening as the integration goes on. Everything to do with Ziggy is really good. He spent his first night in the coop successfully, although I had to manually load the girls in and probably will need to keep doing that for a bit. I set the auto-door to open obscenely early so that if there is any drama at first light, they can shoot out into the secure part of the run to have more space. The hens are getting comfortable with Ziggy and he's even tried to mate a few times, although they still run off when he tries to step up onto them. I assume they'll eventually get used to things and stop freaking out when he starts to shift his weight onto the first foot he's put on their backs (the foot itself is ok with them but they don't being pressed on I guess).

The bad thing is that I still have a bully issue that hasn't resolved after all of this. Buddy is my bully - she was bottom of the pecking order when Dimple went broody and I think she saw Dimple's removal for broody breaking as an opportunity to climb the ladder. She's had scuffles with some of the other hens but those all resolved after 1-2 tries and she remains below them. However, Buddy is still fixated on Dimple even though Dimple yielded and now flees on sight. Buddy doesn't seem to be trying to kill Dimple or anything, but she seems determined to get a good thump or feather grab in before she's satisfied. This has happened a few times when they've all been out roaming too. The thing that gets me the most is it primarily happens when I'm by or in the run, so I'm somehow a factor in it. If I spy on them through a window I see almost no drama. Ziggy has been doing a stellar job of trying to stop the intermittent conflicts by barking at them and even physically intervening multiple times, but tonight it was getting kind of nuts and even annoying the other hens while I was doing evening chores. So...not being sure what else to do, I guess Buddy will spend a full day or two in the spare room to cool off rather than just being there overnight like I did before.