26/1/2020 0 Comments 26 JanuaryThe hens now all line up at the door when I come to feed them, and make an equal rush at the hen pellets I put out first – this is what Wilma is supposed to eat, and will only eat when she is hungry and in competition with the little hens. They now fearlessly eat alongside her, and she no longer seems to mind. While she is preoccupied with chasing pellets, I settle down on the ground and the little hens come flocking over to where I feed them their pullet mash. If I have seeds or oats for them, I feed them from my hand, and when Wilma wanders over to see what they are getting, I feed her treats while the little hens eat their mash. It is an excellent system but while I was away in Auckland Simon found they could all sort it out harmoniously enough amongst themselves without a system at all. The only time I saw Wilma assert her position in the pecking order today was when I opened the coop door to leave, and Maude wanted to come out with us. I made the mistake a few days ago of allowing Maude to come out and wander around in the grass outside. She had a glorious time, sampling all the weeds, eating the little bugs off the dandelion stalks, digging around in the loose earth and chatting to Goldie and Mabel on the other side of the wire. I watched her for about half an hour, and although she is the world’s most charming hen, even so I was both bored and tense, ready to scoop her up the moment we saw a cat. It reminded me very much of when the children were small and I spent hours watching them doing not very much at all, or, rather, having a rich inner life I had no access to. Now she hovers around the door to the coop looking for her chance to make a dash for freedom again, which she will be allowed to have from time to time.
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22/1/2020 0 Comments 22 JanuaryAs soon as you put a chicken in a box, she will go quiet, no matter how vigorous a protest she puts up when she is put into it. I had noticed Wilma was missing feathers from around her vent so made an appointment for her with our local vet. She made a few quiet comments when I picked up the box, replied occasionally when I spoke to her in her box in the car, made some worried sounds while we waited to see the vet, and spoke politely to the vet herself when she was placed on the examining table, but was a lot quieter than usual, certainly a lot quieter than she was when she was squawking about being put in the box in the first place. The vet commented on how well behaved she was as she submitted to her inspection, but it didn't take too much of an inspection to discover the problem which I am not photographing because no one wants to feel as itchy as I did when the mites were pointed out to me. Mites! I am changing the subject. It is evening now, and I can hear a tui still sending out some notes after it should be asleep. I decided to have one last look at the hens to check out tonight’s sleeping arrangements, and had to run back to the house for a torch when I could only see the three little hens and no sign of Wilma at all. I searched the whole coop without finding her, till I looked on the perch again and there she was, on the tree branch in the corner just behind the other three little hens, not quite touching (so sort of quarantined). If you want to watch hens sleeping, don’t choose black hens. And by now they were all awake again, peering down at me. I wonder if they dream of me when they sleep.
20/1/2020 0 Comments 20 JanuaryHaving brought home three little hens just to keep Wilma from being lonely, I now have to take Wilma on excursions every day not only to keep her from being lonely but to give the three little hens time in the coop without her looming, harassing presence. She accompanied me as I put out the washing, did some weeding (mainly to keep her entertained), gathered some rich soil from under a pile of rotting leaves (for the garden, but it was so full of hoppy things I put a bucket aside for the little hens) and then when I sat on the deck eating lunch, she spent her time sunbathing, then lying in the shade under the chair, then aimlessly pecking at the deck and finally yelling at me to follow her back to the coop. I thought I could give the little hens their bucket of dirt to sift through, but when we arrived the three of them were so content dustbathing together, I couldn't bring myself to let Wilma in till they had finished, about a dusty hour later. She then wanted to take over the pile of dirt, even though she had already had hours of access to all the dirt in the whole garden and the bush beyond.
19/1/2020 0 Comments 19 JanuaryTonight all three little hens made it up to the top perch, taking Wilma's preferred spot in the leafy corner and leaving Wilma to retreat to the far end.
18/1/2020 1 Comment 18 JanuaryWhat would the new sleeping arrangement mean for the flock dynamics (if you can call them a flock yet)? What would happen to the pecking order if Goldie formed an alliance with Wilma? Would Wilma offer her protection from Maude? I hardly read the latest LRB over my breakfast bagel (on Coleridge and ghosts, and the ghosts of words in the poetry of Wordsworth and other Romantics, and on the ghosts of roads untrodden in Romantic and modern poetry, a review worth lingering over, worth a third coffee even, if hens weren't waiting), before I was down at the coop, the hens rushing towards the door, Wilma in the lead, Maude close behind, Mabel keeping close to Maude, Goldie hanging back. The pecking order, it seems, is completely unchanged. Wilma kept a fierce guard over her food bowl, when I fed the younger three Maude kept Goldie away, and Mabel deferred to Maude, and when Wilma came over all three fled from her. With a coop the size of theirs, and with its hen-house, free-standing nesting box, perches and bushes, there are plenty of escape routes, and with food scattered around in enough places there will always be access to food for every bird (including Wilma's blackbird), but there is no let-up of tension and no sudden bond between Wilma and Goldie. Maude did let Goldie join Mabel and herself when they curled up together in a feathered heap after Wilma chased them away from the food one too many times for them to feel like returning to the fray.
17/1/2020 0 Comments 17 JanuaryAstonishing news! Till tonight I have been keeping the small hens in the inner hen-house inside the coop at night, so they would be safe from Wilma and have free access to their chick crumble. Tonight I thought I would leave the door of the hen-house open so they could go in at their leisure and come out in the morning. Well! I went down just to see if they were safely asleep in the hen-house, and there was Goldie up on the highest perch, snuggled up with WIlma! Maude and Mabel had made it as far as the hen-house roof. I woke them all up taking photographs.
16/1/2020 0 Comments 15 JanuaryAll three small hens have now fully explored the coop and Maude and Mabel have established a favourite corner just outside the inner henhouse where they curl up together. They were all very hungry when I came to the coop this morning. I scattered some pellets about for Wilma before opening the door of the hen-house, where Maude and Mabel were already pacing back and forth. Maude rushed out to eat chick crumble from my hand, and while Maude was out I could fill the bowl for Mabel and Goldie. Both Mabel and Goldie will now eat from my hand when they are hungry enough, and Mabel will also come for corn kernels which she has a particular liking for. Maude is already tame enough to curl up in my arms and close her eyes, drowsing in the warmth of my jersey. I took Wilma into the bush for our usual early morning hunt, to give the smaller three hens the run of the coop for a while, and when I brought Wilma back in to lay an egg, Maude and Mabel were exploring the coop’s further reaches, though Goldie had returned to her perch. Wilma’s old nesting spot was on the floor of the henhouse underneath the actual nesting box, and she wasn’t at all sure what to do when the door to the henhouse was closed the first couple of days. There is another nesting box, a free-standing box Simon had made when Rizza was hatching out her chicks, and I had filled it with plenty of shavings and put an encouraging egg from the supermarket in it. We were in the bush hunting yesterday when Wilma decided she needed to cut the hunt short and hurried back over the bridge, heading towards the coop but eyeing up the garden and making a suspicious detour through the irises. An indecisive hen is a funny thing to watch, she will take a few steps in one direction, stop, look about, take another tentative step, change direction, take another step, stop, change direction again, put a foot into the air to take a step then put it back down. She tried settling under an iris, even moved some blades of grass around, sat down, pulled some other blades about her, then stood up, moved off, hesitated, looked around, moved back under the iris, sat down, stood up, turned around, sat down, stood up, and wandered a couple of steps towards the coop. I didn’t think the iris was a particularly good place to lay though at least I would know where the egg was if I stood and watched the whole business, so when she looked like she was going off the iris idea anyway I called her into the coop and watched as she headed uncertainly towards the free-standing nesting box, changed her mind, headed away, headed back towards it, hesitated, took a step inside it, backed out, stepped back in, backed out, went in to her old spot, chasing Goldie out of the way, looked at her old spot, headed back out, made a small, half-hearted threatening gesture towards Maude which Maude ignored, stepped back into the nesting box, did a bit of nesting (I could hear the sounds of a bird turning around and rearranging straw), came out, looked around, wandered about a bit, walked back into her box, started making nesting sounds again. At this point I could take no more and backed quietly out of the coop, but in the evening, there the egg was, for us to collect. I expect she is laying today’s egg now.
14/1/2020 0 Comments 14 JanuaryYesterday Wilma was kept in the coop and the three little hens in the henhouse. Having established her place at the top of the pecking order, Maude is no longer so occupied with keeping the others in line and has made firm friends with Mabel, while Goldie has been keeping her distance on her perch. Today, all three were allowed out into the larger coop while I took Wilma off into the bush, and when I brought Wilma back in Goldie and Mabel were digging about in one corner, while Maude came hurrying up to see what Wilma and I had to offer – a small pile of leaf litter as it happens, full of tiny bugs. Wilma seems to tolerate having small hens in the coop but when Maude and Mabel tried having a dustbath she felt this was just a little too presumptuous, and chased them back into the henhouse, where she let them dustbathe in peace. Goldie is still wary of Maude, and will only come down off her perch for something to eat and drink when Maude is out of the henhouse, so it is just as well Wilma allows Maude out so long as she doesn’t think she can just bathe wherever she wants. By the end of the afternoon Maude had tired herself out in any case, and flopped herself down beside Mabel on the ground.
12/1/2020 0 Comments 12 JanuaryMaude this morning was aggressive enough towards the other hens I worried they might be stressed, so I took her out of the henhouse and released her into the larger coop. Wilma took a couple of pecks at her when she ventured too close, but would probably have been fine if left alone with her, but Wilma and I had our own plans so we left Maude in the coop while we went spider hunting. Eventually I tired of spider hunting but had turned over an interesting patch of composting weeds that Wilma didn’t want to leave, so I went back to the coop without her and spent some time getting Maude used to being handled. She would prefer I didn’t and peeps indignantly when I pick her up but is no trouble to catch and settles down easily enough in my arms. The other two are far too flighty to catch. Later on Wilma returns to the coop and after a couple of pecks, the third time Wilma goes for her Maude fluffs out her chest feathers, stands on tiptoes, flaps her wings and stares Wilma down. It is an almighty display of confidence from a ball of fluff about a third Wilma’s size. Mabel and Goldie get on very nicely together when they are alone in the henhouse, showing no particular interest in asserting any kind of pecking order between the two of them. When I return Maude to the henhouse, Goldie wisely retreats to the perch. She is the only one of the three I have seen on the perch, and looks very relaxed on it, almost falling asleep.
11/1/2020 0 Comments 11 JanuaryAs a solitary hen for some weeks, Wilma has been wandering around forlorn and at a loss, eventually making a pet out of a blackbird. She had been the least tame of our hens but without a flock of hens to follow she has begun following me around the garden, calling me when I go inside, standing wistfully on the deck and walking inside if the door is left open. So this morning I brought home three young hens, about fourteen weeks old, Maude, a lavender Orpington, Mabel, a Light Sussex, and Goldie, a gold-laced Wyandotte, and put them in the small hen-house inside the larger coop, where Wilma can talk to them through the wire. So far, Wilma has shown no interest in them at all, preferring to follow me back out of the coop. I took her into the bush and turned over some logs, under which we found several spiders and a worm the size of a small snake. Maude is asserting herself as the dominant hen of the three little ones, issuing completely random reprimands to the other two. It will be interesting to see what happens when she and Wilma are released into each other’s company along with the others.
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