Hi everyone,
It's week two and the chicks are growing fast. It's almost time to find them a bigger home. I've noticed when chickens get crowded that they fight and peck at each other. Once blood is drawn, that particular chicken is seen as a weakling and the rest will literally peck it to death. So tomorrow, I will be looking for a bigger container to hold them until it's safe to put them outside.
But, before we sit back and point our fingers at the terrible behavior of chickens, keep in mind the human race's natural tendency to do the same. First off, when we're crowded into one area with no hope for escape and have to compete for food, history shows that humans will do whatever it takes to survive. If you're looking for recent evidence of this, then all you have to do is read reports from the New Orleans Superdome during hurricane Katrina. I can't imagine what it was like for those people to be cooped up in there, trying to weather the storm outside when another equally deadly storm raged inside.
As I mentioned before, once blood is drawn, the rest of the flock of chickens will literally peck a chicken to death. I've experienced this before with my human counterparts. I remember sitting in a meeting and one person will bring up someone's negative trait or something maybe he or she did, stop and watch how many people jump on the bandwagon. One person, usually someone with a strong personality will say something, and everyone else like a flock of chickens will quickly agree. I've seen this done time and time again. As a rule, I try to sit back and delay any sort of judgement until I know all the facts.
This brings me around to the pecking order. Back when I had a full flock of twelve chickens, I noticed that there were about five favored hens that surrounded the rooster almost constantly. The other six hens hung out on the outskirts of the group. Whenever one would get too close to the rooster or were too close to the food when they were all eating, they would get chased away by the favored hens. To put this into human terms, when you walk into any gathering there is always a pecking order that is established. If you have never noticed--probably you're at the top of the pecking order or you're one of those rare individuals that couldn't care less. The learned pecking order starts when a child goes to school. Every kid knows which kids are the popular ones in the classroom and which ones are gross and kept at arm's length. Hollywood has capitalized on this, in that many teen movies tell stories of the poor kid on the other side of the tracks that just wants to be popular.
The last lesson learned, is that hens don't really need roosters. They will produce eggs without roosters and they can happily saunter through their lives without a rooster nearby. In fact, if you have neighbors closeby that complain about crowing, you can have a few hens and they probably won't realize you have animals in your backyard. I refuse to go into the man versus woman debate--it's absolutely useless banter and a waste of time. Let's just say that nothing beats having a good man around and the same could be said of a woman....
But back to roosters, a rooster can be useful when you want fertilized eggs and want to hatch out your own chicks. If you have a good rooster, he will actually protect the hens, as well as ensure that they eat. Donnie, the best rooster of all time, never ate anything until all his girls ate. Now, there's a man!!!
Take care, All
