Two Hens - one has to go. Please help us decide what to do!

[WoodlandWoman]

How large is their coop? How large is their run?

 

[JodyJo]

they'reHISchickens :

Rehome BOTH and get two compatible hens of the same breed?

this doesn't guarantee they will get along. I have a mixed flock and they do great...only one or two of each breed...sometimes nothing helps, but re-homing. To me, I would re-home the bully and see how the flock settles down.​

 

[stcroixusvi]

Quote:
Life is short

 

[rungirl]

Quote:
I agree. They do work.

 

[kari_dawn]

I agree with the others in rehoming the RIR...they tend to be very..."asertive" birds to put it diplomatically...at least hatchery stock. I have no experience with true RIR...I would also consider having at least three birds. The reason being is flock dynamic calls for a pecking order. When the dominant bird has only one "underling", all of her attention is focused on the one submissive bird.

With three birds in the mix, at the very least, the dominant will have to divide her attention to two birds, giving them both a better chance at getting bullied less...kindof like giving a rooster multiple girls. It takes the stress off of all of them. I have a mixed flock, and I have standards and bantams. Maybe you could find Sophie a nice LF buff orpington (I am super partial to these darling birds), and also a little bantie. I only have one bantie right now, but she is very high on the pecking order. Maybe a bantam cochin (mine is a black cochin frizzle)? They are also very gentle and laid back.

I think a flock with more members will give them all a better representation of the pecking order, and make it a more harmonious flock.

 

[BWKatz]

Rehome the bully Beans. All of mine hav good temperaments but my buff laced Polish and white leghorn are the friendliest.My silkies are pretty friendly too. I would consider getting 2 more if at all possible.

 

[LaurelRidgeDreams]

Quote:
Pinless peepers have worked for me.

 

[Eddie K]

Ordered the pinless peepers about a week ago. Will report back soon hopefully!

 

[Eddie K]

Well I didn't see that coming!

We attached the pinless peeper onto Beans the bully and they went on like a dream. Didn't even need to hold her. She just stood there while I edged them closer to her and hey presto, the job was done.

We left her for a few minutes and the poor thing looked so disoriented and just stood there kind of hunched and looking around tentatively. I'd never seen her look so small before! While she was standing there like a statue, occasionally shaking her head a little bit to remove the peepers and refusing the corn from my hand, (a genuine first time occurrence for this normally avaricious little beast), along struts demure little Sophie. She sized Beans up, puffed herself up and then charged her with her beak, winning some of Beans' feathers in the process.

Sophie had immediately realised Beans' vulnerability and raced in to assert her dominance. I'm sure that for many BYC members this is nothing that you haven't seen before, but for us, there really is so much about these fascinating creatures that we didn't know. We knew we had to apply the peepers to both girls, but Sophie hadn't even given us a chance!

Obviously we separated them and put Beans in their fenced-off area by their coop for her own safety. I went to the house to boil some water to make Sophie's peeper more malleable like we did with Beans before applying it. In the meantime Sophie, a bird visibly transformed in the space of five minutes, is strutting around the garden like she owns the place. After a couple of minutes of pomp and circumstance, she realised that she still hadn't quite made her point before and strutted over over to the fence, attempting to attack Beans through the gaps in the flimsy fence so we had to rush in to separate them.

We put Beans inside the coop. No matter, Sophie tried to attack Beans through the metal grid of the chicken wire. Again we rushed in to separate them. Anyone who has followed Sophie's travails will know that she has taken a fair bit of crap from Beans, and she clearly has a long memory!

Anyway to cut a long and arduous story short, about one hour, three peepers, (two snapped), and a bloody nose, (Sophie's, not mine), we've had to concede defeat on applying the peepers to Sophie. The stupid bird appears, to my amateur eyes, to have one normal sized nostril and one poorly-defined one that won't accommodate the prong of the pinless peeper. The thing just wouldn't stay on.

It's been about two months now since we've started keeping them apart from each other due to Beans' bullying and I can't help wondering whether we have ourselves contributed to the problem.

Looking back at our first attempt to keep chickens with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if we overreacted with the original pecking due to being a pair of giant softies too averse to a bit of natural henpecking behaviour. Perhaps not, because Sophie really was under too much strain from it but I'm wondering if the two months apart has been too long a period of time and we should have done something about one of them long before now.

We are still undecided what to do next. We will either keep Sophie or Beans as a solitary bird, (seems cruel to me, not so keen on this idea), or rehome both of them and start again in the spring with a single, more docile, breed.

Any suggestions on what to do now would be, as ever, most welcome.

 

[stcroixusvi]

I am so sorry to hear all this, but am going through a similar situation at the same time. We are reintroducing Allison - a hen that prolapsed and has now recovered - into a separate coop we built for Andy, a friendly, very sweet rooster and his cage mate, Amy - all A's, not by design! Amy, a Polish who was bottom, is now pecking Allison and Andy thinks he has died and gone to heaven with another hen in his cage. We tried introducing them at night, no good. Finally yesterday we all sat in the coop with them while they worked it out. Allison does have a roost she can fly to that Amy can't reach - Amy has limited vision because of her enormous crest. Andy continues to fluff himself at her, but is not nearly as aggressive as he was - he is the most nonaggressive rooster I have ever seen - hence his own coop.

I guess the short answer is that the chicken world is a cruel, cruel world. We can try to alleviate some of the issues with separate housing, but they will do as they do do, as TS Eliot would say. Good luck, and let me know if you need any small coop plans