The new chickens, poor things, are getting royally pecked to bits by the older members of the flock. They’ve spent the three days since their arrival hiding and perching, trying to keep out of the way of their tormentors.

Things came to a head today when one of them pushed itself so far under a log that it got wedged and couldn’t get out. I had to pick up the logs to free it, at which point four of the five older chickens all descended on it. In the excitement, big Bertha, the most vicious of our feathered ladies, accidentally laid an egg that clearly wasn’t ready to come out. The shell was all papery and it split open like a water bomb. The other chickens leapt in to gobble it up (one of them even slurping down the floppy shell like the skin of some custard) while the new ones beat a hasty retreat.

So I’ve removed the high perch and I’ve strung the raspberry netting across the compound, separating the new from the old but leaving it so they can still easily see each other.

It’s working so far. The new ones quickly realised they were safe and dug into a big trough of food like they’d not been fed for a week, while the old ones kept running into the netting, trying to get through and failing miserably. They kept on getting their combs caught.

They’ll still be sleeping together as we’ll be lifting the new hens into the coop at night, which hopefully means they’ll all get to know each other a bit better, but in all honesty, settling in these three is proving to be a lot more difficult than it was settling in the last three. Back then, I suppose, it was three new versus three old so the two sets were better matched. This time around it’s three new versus five old and the poor things are finding themselves seriously outnumbered.

Related posts:

1. Margot the bow-legged chicken
2. Should we let sleeping hens lie?
3. Curing the pecking hens