Why is my hen acting like a crazy lunatic?

[mrbstephens]

Today I noticed my RIR, Freda fighting with the other hens. Then the other hens started pecking her. I removed her and she was still acting crazy. She's standing real tall, wings slightly spread and chest out. Like she was ready to fight. I let her free range by herself for about an hour. I let her back in with the others and watched as she once again stuck out her chest and was starting a fight with the others again. The one big change is that I rehomed our rooster a week ago. Freda was his favorite. Poor thing because totally bald and bared backed because of him. Everything looked normal and they all got along just fine. In fact they looked relieved that they no longer needed to watched their back for that rooster! Maybe this behavior is related? Buy why NOW?

 

[kathyinmo]

Sounds like she is taking his place as the Alpha. She is just letting the other girls know.

 

[calicokat]

We had this when we had to remove a girl for 2 days because of an injury. One of the other girls must have moved up a notch in the pecking order -- so when Marigold came back they had this same behavior as the pecking order was reset. Just those two though, the others stayed out of it mostly.

In our case it was settled in less than an hour and if you missed the few skirmishes, you'd have never known anything happened!