ElanorAdler
In the Brooder
- Jun 11, 2017
- 12
- 15
- 29
Hello everyone!
First of all, some background info that might help.
I have three rescued hens from two different rescues. I got the first three ones in February last year and I got two more this year in March.
The original three got along quite well. The boss, Uhura, was a bit mean with the others at the start but when the other two accepted her as the boss everything went smoothly. She would get noisy sometimes but only in two occasions: "egg alert" (after she laid) and "intruder alert" (mostly the neighbours' cats), which was fine by me.
Bringing the other hens in was stressful for humans and birds alike. We borrowed a dog kennel shaped like a house from a neighbour and adapted it as a chicken coop to keep the two flocks separate and give time to the new ones to grow feathers. They were in two separate areas of the garden but still could see each other, so they were getting used to each other. After like 6 weeks I finally moved both groups into the same area, still keeping the two coops, until eventually all of them naturally moved to the original coop.
Uhura then was a bit bossier and noisier but after all the new experiences and all the changes I thought it was normal, the pecking order needed to be reestablished and all that.
Shortly after all of them moved in the same coop, one of the original trio died. The new order seemed to reestablish fairly quickly, but exactly a month later, another one of the original trio passed away. Uhura has increasingly developed such a horrible personality these last few months that if we were a different sort of people we would have had her for dinner a long time ago. She is always loudly complaining about every single thing, the alarms are not only for eggs or intruders anymore, sometimes nothing seems to be happening and there she is, screaming her head off. She doesn't peck at the others on a regular basis, thank goodness, but they cannot go into the chicken coop to lay an egg without her following them and screaming in their faces while in the nesting box. If I close the run so she can't access the nesting box while someone else is there, she goes nuts and flies to the roof of the hen house, trying to access it from the top (which is impossible, but it brings her dangerously close to the top of the wall that separates my garden from the neighbour's, who by the way has a dog). If I move her to the other side of the garden (where the new group originally was), which is separated by a sort of net, so she can't access the coop at all, she'd find the weak spot of the net and fly over it to get to the roof of the coop again.
I just don't know what to do anymore. At first every time she screamed I would spray her with water, and she seemed to get the picture, but she doesn't care anymore. If I give them treats or vegetables to be distracted, she would still give out WHILE eating them, and give out again like asking for more or for different ones. I feel like there is no human way to make her happy and go back to when she was only a bit bossy, but generally nice and quiet. I don't know if I am missing something, if I don't understand the signals she is giving me, or if she only needs time. I have reached the point at which I will sigh with relief when she dies, but at the same time I feel guilty about it because I might be the one doing something wrong or not tending to her needs.
The others have started copying her in this behaviour as well. I've spoken to all the neighbours that can potentially hear them and they are all ok (some of them didn't even know we had hens) but I want to keep it that way!
Any advice for me? This is really driving me nuts.
PS. There are also lots of crows and magpies in the area, and they like to come to our garden to eat the hen food. We scare them away but we are not always in the house. Sometimes it seems like the hens don't really care, sometimes they seem sort of bothered by it and sometimes they chase them away. I just don't know what to make of it, because the crows were there last year as well and Uhura still wasn't that noisy.
First of all, some background info that might help.
I have three rescued hens from two different rescues. I got the first three ones in February last year and I got two more this year in March.
The original three got along quite well. The boss, Uhura, was a bit mean with the others at the start but when the other two accepted her as the boss everything went smoothly. She would get noisy sometimes but only in two occasions: "egg alert" (after she laid) and "intruder alert" (mostly the neighbours' cats), which was fine by me.
Bringing the other hens in was stressful for humans and birds alike. We borrowed a dog kennel shaped like a house from a neighbour and adapted it as a chicken coop to keep the two flocks separate and give time to the new ones to grow feathers. They were in two separate areas of the garden but still could see each other, so they were getting used to each other. After like 6 weeks I finally moved both groups into the same area, still keeping the two coops, until eventually all of them naturally moved to the original coop.
Uhura then was a bit bossier and noisier but after all the new experiences and all the changes I thought it was normal, the pecking order needed to be reestablished and all that.
Shortly after all of them moved in the same coop, one of the original trio died. The new order seemed to reestablish fairly quickly, but exactly a month later, another one of the original trio passed away. Uhura has increasingly developed such a horrible personality these last few months that if we were a different sort of people we would have had her for dinner a long time ago. She is always loudly complaining about every single thing, the alarms are not only for eggs or intruders anymore, sometimes nothing seems to be happening and there she is, screaming her head off. She doesn't peck at the others on a regular basis, thank goodness, but they cannot go into the chicken coop to lay an egg without her following them and screaming in their faces while in the nesting box. If I close the run so she can't access the nesting box while someone else is there, she goes nuts and flies to the roof of the hen house, trying to access it from the top (which is impossible, but it brings her dangerously close to the top of the wall that separates my garden from the neighbour's, who by the way has a dog). If I move her to the other side of the garden (where the new group originally was), which is separated by a sort of net, so she can't access the coop at all, she'd find the weak spot of the net and fly over it to get to the roof of the coop again.
I just don't know what to do anymore. At first every time she screamed I would spray her with water, and she seemed to get the picture, but she doesn't care anymore. If I give them treats or vegetables to be distracted, she would still give out WHILE eating them, and give out again like asking for more or for different ones. I feel like there is no human way to make her happy and go back to when she was only a bit bossy, but generally nice and quiet. I don't know if I am missing something, if I don't understand the signals she is giving me, or if she only needs time. I have reached the point at which I will sigh with relief when she dies, but at the same time I feel guilty about it because I might be the one doing something wrong or not tending to her needs.
The others have started copying her in this behaviour as well. I've spoken to all the neighbours that can potentially hear them and they are all ok (some of them didn't even know we had hens) but I want to keep it that way!
Any advice for me? This is really driving me nuts.
PS. There are also lots of crows and magpies in the area, and they like to come to our garden to eat the hen food. We scare them away but we are not always in the house. Sometimes it seems like the hens don't really care, sometimes they seem sort of bothered by it and sometimes they chase them away. I just don't know what to make of it, because the crows were there last year as well and Uhura still wasn't that noisy.
