After my first two flocks, I had not started any chicks for a couple of years, but in the fall of 2017, I came home from work one morning to find a note on my front door from a neighbor, asking if I would take her one remaining Rhode Island Red hen. I do not recall how many chicks she had started out with, but in the course of their free ranging, the rest were all lost, either to predators (they did have some evidence of that), or they just never found their way home.
So, I adopted Henny Penny, who I mostly just call “Little Red.”
Initially, I put her in “The Infirmary” not knowing how well she’d get along in the larger flock. I did put my little half-blind Barred Rock hen in with her for a bit. I can’t recall exactly how long I kept that up, but it wasn’t long and I just decided to open the connecting gate between the runs and see what happened.
As it turned out, Lil’ Red made her way straight up the pecking order to be one of the top hens in the flock!
Lil’ Red kept me in eggs over the winter between ’17 and ’18 while the rest of the flock had molted and pretty much quit laying for the season. She’d done a fair job of keeping up laying through the winter of ’18-’19 as well. She didn’t seem to have a full-blown molt last fall like the rest of the older hens.
She is also the first hen who willingly squats submissively to me and lets me pet her every time I come into the coop/run to feed the girls. My little half-blind Barred Rock is starting to squat, though I’ve been picking her up every day for well over a year now (she can’t see me coming!) to be sure she gets her share of treats. I have to spray her rear with Blu-Kote often as she is still at the bottom of the pecking order and has only two long tail feathers left, and no butt fluff. Also, one of my Buff Orpingtons has started to squat for me…this is a recent development and I’m pretty excited to be able to pet more than two of my 10 hens now!
We’ll see how well I do handling Flock Four. I didn’t sit out in the garage handling chicks in the past, but now that I have them brooding out in “The Infirmary”, I may try to spend a little more time with them.
Check the site for more chicken updates or take a look at other projects I’ve done here. 🙂
PreppinWolf 