There is a Season.. There be a Reason

A sad event happened here a few weeks ago. One of our two chickens, Tundra, cuddled into the nesting box, went to sleep and never woke up. Having productive animals in your back yard can give you many joys but when one of them dies it really tugs at your heart. There were a few signs that something wasn't quite right but we had treated the most likely culprit and she had seemed to improve. Thus it was quite a shock and something we hadn't expected to need to face for quite a while yet as both of our girls were just coming up on 12 months old.

As with all events like this, even if you're not quite ready yet the living need to be considered. Natas our remaining girl was pining badly. She spent her day calling out for her flock, if she wasn't at our feet she just wasn't happy. As much as I like my girls I can't spend my day wandering around the back yard with a chicken at my feet. I gave it a week or so to ensure that whatever made Tundra sick wasn't going to cause Natas problems but the decision had been made, some new girls needed to be found.

There was some internal debate as to how to handle this. Natas being an ISA is a bit of a bully and to make it a bit more complex I really wanted to add two girls to the flock. Having to scramble to find replacement chickens with no time to research really isn't the best practice. Needless to say the problem with adding two of course is that they will have grown up together and just might gang up on Natas. I briefly considered adding one and then another a bit later but that just seemed to ask for trouble. It took me a few days but I decided the benefits of adding two, younger girls, were significantly more than the possible risks.

Thus the Lavender Girls, Violet and Winny, came into our henhouse. They are young, quick and a bit on the flighty side. Which, is all good when you are putting them in with a bossy little boots who is known for using her beak to underline any point of order. I looked around for a bit and simply couldn't find anyone with young chickens who was answering their email. Then somone posted on ALS about looking for chickens and a lady I know who breeds Lavender Araucana commented that she had girls up for sale. It's always a relief when you can buy from people you know and they came to me healthy and flock wise.

Let's just say Natas didn't approve of their existence and was more than happy to express it. It took a week before they actually spent any time on the floor of the coop.. Yep, they spent 7 days flying from the night perches to a large off the ground perch during the day, then trying to sleep on the roof of the hen house at night. Due to our fox problems I couldn't leave them on the roof so we had a nightly struggle to move them onto the night perches.


Thankfully now at two weeks things are settling down nicely. Natas is still slowly chasing them away from the various food piles we scatter across the floor but not with the vehemence she once was. At this point it's just part of the process that she eats a bit, moves toward their pile they move away and find another pile. She has stopped calling out for her flock so I think she is really starting to accept that they are going to be her future pals. It will be interesting to see just how long it takes before the partition can be taken out of the night box but at least with it there the Lavender girls are putting themselves onto the night perch and Natas, who is a lot easier to handle, is the only one we have to move.

I expect we are still a few weeks away from them really being an integrated flock but at least at this point I can start to see what it might look like.