Rooster infidelity, hen aprons, and moving on after loss.

[Saum Creek]

Hi everyone. I am pretty new to chickens and have a couple strange questions - I hope this is the right place!

A bit of backstory: in May of last year we hatched chicks at the school where I work and I ended up with a personal flock of one rooster and 3 lovely hens. Due to hubris on my end and just terrible luck I lost my two cuddliest to a raccoon several weeks ago, days before they turned 1. Since then it's just been Bluebarb, my rooster, and Marilla, my one remaining hen. Here is a photo, just because I think they're cute:



Anyway, I picked up 6 chicks at the local farm store and my chicken run is currently being renovated by a professional. In the meantime, both of my chickens have lost their minds. In risk of sounding crazy, here are my questions:

1. Marilla now refuses to lay an egg anywhere except for her ex-dust bathing spot right outside my front door. She will literally hold it and scream bloody murder until I let her out and she runs around front like she's about to pee her pants. What does this mean??

2. When I lost the other hens I immediately purchased a hen apron for Marilla because she was already a favorite and getting a bit thin on the back. After I put it on, Bluebarb basically stopped showing interest in Marilla. Instead he has been running off to a coop on the other side of campus and flirting with the hens there, abandoning Marilla wherever he happens to leave her. I don't know if this was caused by the hen apron or the lost of the two other hens, but after I took the apron off last night, well.... today he stuck with her and actually came back to roost way earlier than he has been, with Marilla.

Her skin is a bit irritated on the back now, and I don't know if it's better to put it back on her and potentially have Barb abandon her again or let her rough it til my pullets are at POL and hope for the best. What do you guys think?

Anyway, I think I will leave it at that for now. Chick pic for more cute:

 

[Hidrainja4]

And "These are the days of our Lives" Old soap opera reference. Any change like renovating the coop messes with their little chicken brains- let her lay eggs in her dust bath at least you will know were they are. Rooster doesn't recognize her in a new outfilt- hen saddle. Do you need fertilized eggs from this couple to hatch? If not I would leave the saddle on and let him fret over the pullets he can't get to - it will give him something to do. Often changes in the coop good or bad will throw the hens off some will stop laying for several weeks.

 

[centrarchid]

Put yourself in Bluebarb's shoes. He has a short life expectancy (Raccoon event demonstrates this). To increase odds he genes are carried forward, he needs to father chicks that survive, and mating more hens furthers that effort. Then he is aware of some additional hens advertising they are looking for a rooster so they can also produce chicks that survive. The remaining current hen for some reason is not appealing, either it is the new clothes or she is rejecting him. Either way, he is motivated to keep mating. His fidelity is to his lineage.

Marilla may be rejecting him for natural reasons. First could be she is stressed over nest site issue. My hens get stressed when not able to access their preferred nest site as laying elsewhere can be like flushing a good kid down the toilet. Second, she could be like my brood hens that are expected to fill out their own clutch's and begin incubation. Once the hen is near the point of setting (start of broodiness), she no longer needs to mate with rooster because she already as sperm in her reproductive tract and she is about to stop laying.

It is stressful for most hens to be in sustained lay. They are invested in producing eggs long enough that it competes with other body functions that can include feathers. In your setting she is also mating more than she needs for a sustained length of time. My game hens that have a choice mate mostly when laying to produce a clutch of hatching eggs. This means they mate a few times a day for about 2 weeks before going taking a 7 or 8 week rest before egg production and mating resumes, again for about 2 weeks.

Most people are keeping chickens like I do my American Dominique hens that are in sustained lay and being mated several times per day over at least 8 months of the year once they become mature. That is tough in a different way relative to what the broody hens endure with broody cycles. Being a hen can be tough.


A side note. Feathering on hen's back could be damaged by more than frequent mating. Chickens are very recently evolved from a bantam sized bird that has similar feather strength of today's chickens. Then we can have a very large size discrepency between hens and roosters that appears to exist between your remaining birds. Big roosters are particularly had on backs of smaller hens.

 

[Saum Creek]

Thank you, @centrarchid! That was all extremely helpful. Knowing what might be going on will help in figuring out how to make their lives less stressful for the time being. x