I'm so tired of chicken drama.
As you know, a couple of months ago, Ginny the chicken somehow got injured. Chickens can be very cruel, and our chicken Tonks is especially not nice. Once she sensed that Ginny was crippled, she went in for the kill. Tonks would hold Ginny down and peck repeatedly at her neck and comb, and poor Ginny was bloodied, weak, and getting stuck under things trying to hide from Tonks. So I made the decision to remove Ginny from the flock and let her heal in peace. She has been free-ranging now for several weeks, and she has gotten much better, still with a tiny limp but ok (though not laying eggs at all, so frankly, I need to think further about that). The last week or so, Ginny has been sneakily scooting into the coop every time I open the door. She just wants to be with her mates!
Meanwhile, we have the two new chickens in a big dog cage inside the coop, so that everyone can get used to them without beating them up. It's been a bit of a stressful time. Tonks has been trying to peck them through the cage, and of course she can't get to them, which is good, but makes me worried for this weekend, when I'm hoping to integrate the new chickens into the flock. {By the way, the new chickens (Golden Sexlinks) don't have names yet. Our original six chickens all had "Order of the Phoenix" names, from Harry Potter. Hermione, Minerva (both Plymouth Barred Rocks), Ginny, Molly (both Rhode Island Reds), Tonks, and Luna (both Easter Eggers). Minerva died the summer after we got her.) There are only so many Order of the Phoenix girl characters. So we either start using boy names or we go on to a different group of names. Or we don't name them at all.}
This morning, I decided to try to integrate Ginny back into the flock before we let the new chickens out, since she clearly wanted to be a part of the group again. So I carried her down from the hen house, but instead of putting her outside, I put her down inside. And she loved it! She was scratching and talking and enjoying herself! For a bit Tonks ignored her and I thought all was going to be well. But soon, the abuse began again and poor Ginny had stuffed herself under the feeding shelf and was trembling. So I grabbed Tonks by the tail (a major achievement! I can rarely catch her) and threw her outside the coop. A reader, Laura, suggested this a long time ago, and I decided it was a great idea and acted impulsively on it today. Tonks is now on time out in the yard. Let's see how she likes being the outsider for a change.
As for the new chickens, I want to be around when they are integrated, so I can watch them and see how it goes. So the plan is this: Friday night, I'll take them out of the big dog cage and put them up on the roosts with the other chickens. I'll remove the cage from the coop. And Saturday morning, they'll all come down and hopefully be friends. The smaller of the two is very, very shy, and I worry about her in particular. I'm thinking of putting a bunch of boxes in the coop so that she can get away from the other chickens if she needs to. We already have several big branches as daytime roosts all around the coop, so that's another place a chicken can go for relief. Doesn't work for Ginny, though, since I think she is having trouble hopping/flying.
Chicken drama! Argh.
If any of you have successfully integrated new chickens into an existing flock, I'd love to hear about it. And if you've had a bully like Tonks, I'd like to hear about that, too. I know that the pecking order exists for a reason, and that it is better for them in the long run to know where everyone stands, but holding one down and repeatedly beating up on her is not something I want in my flock.