- Sep 4, 2014
- 7
- 4
- 19
Hello BYC members,
To make things easier, I've attached a couple of photos of our Wyandottes. The first picture is a sliver laced female called Masala, and with her is Pie and they both get on very well with our Wyandotte Roo called Stew (second picture, investigating our van) and also the other 11 chooks of various breeds (Silkies, Pekins, three mental Frizzles).
A brief history of Pie and Masala:
They are both a few months old now but we got them at maybe just off heat. We were given Pie for free by a breeder as they were going to put him to sleep for being the 'wrong colour for the breed' (????), the breeder did say he's a male but still not sure on that one. As is our particular custom, we separated him on arrival in our quarantine area just to ensure he had no nasties. During this time, he was with us on a one to one basis and developed a close bond with us - he had free rein of the house and front garden and loved it to bits. Masala arrived about a week or so after Pie and she has a similar 'hard luck' story - she has a limp but manages very well and seems bright, happy and full of life. She maybe can't run as fast as the others and often crashes into the longer grass and plants to stop or trips over but the vet gave her a clean bill of health so if she's happy - we're happy. We put Masala with Pie to 'buddy up' as they were both roughly the same size and from the same place during quarantine.
Without wishing to be to anthropomorphic about this, these two little Wyandottes have had a very strange effect on our flock. They both fitted into the pecking order in the coop extremely well on introduction BUT... The bond they share is just incredible, to the point if you take one away from the other as we have done in the past for health checks - the other emits this absolutely heart breaking call sound which I've never heard a chook ever make before and it seems to be their own personal sound for each other!.. To the point, their quick checks are now done together as they follow each other when you pick one of them up. They will follow each other around outside and are very rarely seen apart. Pie shows no interest in any other birds in the flock and is usually found attending to Masala and has been known to carry her food to her, he protects her which has sometimes resulted in him getting into a minor scrap with one of the others. In the meantime, the others have now developed into three or four little 'cliques' almost which they were not doing prior to the introduction of Masala and Pie. There's no fighting among the cliques but there is definitely 'bed buddies' with our roo, Stew, making room for his favourite females, Popcorn (Pekin) and Hunter (Silkie) on a nightly basis, during the day, he has no preference if you get me lol.. Nugget (Pekin) insists on being a house chicken overnight and knocks on the back door to be let in at dusk.. Could it be because we perhaps give the to much freedom to roam? I've never seen this behaviour before and wondered if anyone else out there had similar experiences with their flocks?..
