South Dakota Guy
Songster
Little bit of background here, my wife is the main chicken keeper, I am just support staff. It's ok as I like it this way. We are still very new at this as we have only been chicken raising for about 10 months. Anyhow, we had some mean girls. A group of three gold laced Wyandotte hens that have exercised a reign of tyranny over three silver laced Wyandotte hens since they arrived about 8 months ago. My wife picked up two Delaware pullets around 5 months old last week from a local chicken grower. These were the calmest chickens we have ever seen and they allowed us to handle them even though they haven't experienced much handing by humans. After patching up another GLW from an attack by different GLW, I suggested to my wife that she might want to replace the mean girls. Two hours later those mean girls were at an organic produce farm where they will live out their lives eating bugs and making fertilizer. My wife promptly went back to her chicken grower and purchased two more Delaware pullets of similar age.
Which brings us to what I saw two nights in a row from one of the new Delaware pullets/hens. After only being here two days, on the third night the three SLW hens were sitting on an outside roost. The SLW hens are very subdued, the mean girls are gone but now these really big white chickens have taken over. As it was getting dark and the Delaware hens had all gone into the coop for the night, one of the Delaware hens, (hereafter known as Big Momma), came out of the coop and nudged the SLW hens off of the roost, one by one, and herded them into the coop. My wife and I couldn't believe it. After it happened again the next night, we knew Big Momma was a keeper even if she never lays egg one. As we can't have a rooster where we live, a dominant, but not mean hen, will mean so much for our little flock.
I would love to hear about cool and amazing chicken things that you might have observed.
Which brings us to what I saw two nights in a row from one of the new Delaware pullets/hens. After only being here two days, on the third night the three SLW hens were sitting on an outside roost. The SLW hens are very subdued, the mean girls are gone but now these really big white chickens have taken over. As it was getting dark and the Delaware hens had all gone into the coop for the night, one of the Delaware hens, (hereafter known as Big Momma), came out of the coop and nudged the SLW hens off of the roost, one by one, and herded them into the coop. My wife and I couldn't believe it. After it happened again the next night, we knew Big Momma was a keeper even if she never lays egg one. As we can't have a rooster where we live, a dominant, but not mean hen, will mean so much for our little flock.
I would love to hear about cool and amazing chicken things that you might have observed.
). he tries to breed, but he is so uncoordinated, he just awkwardly kicks/ steps on the hens, in a futile attempt to assert his dominance.
