This is not a pretty topic, but just about everyone who has kept chickens has faced it at least once. Sunday night I got a call from a friend here in town. She’s kept chickens for thirty years, but just this week had her first experience with finding two hens pecked to death.

Chickens are omnivores. In storybooks they eat corn. Sometimes worms. In real life I’ve seen a hen gulp down a frog. They like cheese. And meat. Chickens are attracted to the color red. They’ll peck at anything that color, including each other. It doesn’t make them mean or vicious. It’s just who they are.

Chickens peck at each other all of the time. The term “pecking order” comes from flock dynamics. Chickens let each other know who has first dibs to the best food and the best roost by using their beaks. They rarely hurt each other. It’s simply how they communicate. But, sometimes something happens that upsets the equilibrium.

Yesterday, I went to my friend’s coop to solve the mystery of why her established flock now had hens with gaping wounds and one rooster shivering on a high roost.

The first thing to ask is “has anything changed recently?”

Here are the clues:

This winter two Wyandotte pullets were added to the flock of mostly Polish and cochins. Wyandottes are a tad more assertive than the other breeds already there. After a few minutes of observation it was obvious that the Wyandottes are pecking the other hens.

The weather has been awful – dark, rainy, cold. The chickens have been inside.

My friend used to let her chickens free range, at least part of the day, but the fear of coyotes (often visible in the fields) have kept the chickens confined to a small coop and fenced pen.

She owns two large roosters. Both are nice boys, not at all aggressive to people, but they are huge and active.

Only one of the hens shows a bare saddle area where the rooster has been mounting her (bare-backed hens are a sign of mating.) Roosters have favorites, and it looks like this poor hen was showing the signs of excessive male attention. That hen has been pecked severely.

What this all adds up to is that this flock, that is larger than normal, has been more confined than usual. Bored chickens peck. Once a hen has reddish bare skin showing, the other hens go after her.

The solution:

1. Give away the Wyandottes. Their personalities don’t mesh with the other hens. They might do fine in a different, free-ranging flock of large hens, or they might become stew.

2. Put duct tape on the bare back of the the pecked hen (duct tape should be in every farmer’s medicine cabinet!). By the time it falls off the feathers will be growing back in.

3. Any chickens with wounds need to be isolated in pens (dog crates work great), their wounds washed and topical antibiotics applied until healed. This is a pain in the neck to do, but necessary. (I once kept a pecked hen in the basement for 4 weeks. While there, I taught her some tricks, just for the heck of it. Chickens are easy to train. Remind me to blog about that…)

4. Give the chickens scratch grains (such as cracked corn) first thing in the morning to give them something to do. Get cabbage and kale (often supermarkets will give you boxes of trimmed leaves for free) and hang them up, or hang in suet feeders (see one in the inside hencam). Birds that have greens to peck rarely peck each other.

5. Sometimes chickens peck each other because they lack calcium in their diet. Add crushed oyster shell to the scratch.

6. If all else fails, reduce the size of the flock and expand the run. Rarely do chickens peck if they have enough space. (This is only true if all birds are healthy. Always remove sick or wounded birds immediately!)

My friend has some work to do, but I’m sure her flock will once again find a peaceful equilibrium.

Etsy is a sell site for crafters – each seller gets their own “store” on Etsy. It’s one of my favorite web sites. Not only is it fun to peruse (great user interface!) but since everything listed is made by the sellers, the individuality and creativity of each craftsperson/artist comes through. I apologize in advance if you lose work productivity today because you get entranced and can’t leave.

I opened an Etsy store of my own to sell pinbacks and magnets. There will be more chicken-themed items up soon. But, if you know any knitters, I’ve got some lovely magnets available made from a discarded knitting book. BTW, there’s a great photo of Snowball sitting on my shoulder on my Etsy homepage. Go see.

And for more fun, I’ve added a couple of Web sites to my link page on chickenkeeping.com. The chicken group in Philadelphia has put together a page of silly chicken stuff, including youtube videos and games. On a slightly more serious note, Christine Heinrichs has a blog that often discusses rare breeds and chicken issues – it’s good to check in with her once in awhile.

Have fun!

I dislike housework, but I enjoy mucking out the barn- especially on the first strong-hint-of-spring day. Today the sun was out, the snow was melting and I was in the coop, shoveling. The first step is to get all of the hens into the yard and close the door behind them so I can work without their underfoot interference. It’s not a big barn – a complete clean out fills just three muck buckets, but it is satisfying to do. I also swept down the cobwebs from the ceiling (not a pleasant job!) I splurged and emptied an entire bag of pine shavings in the coop, and filled the nesting boxes with them. Then I opened the door and let the girls back in.

I wish that Hencam had sound (maybe some day…) because you should have heard the comments. It was like giving a designer house tour to a ladies’ club. First there were the chuckling murmurs and quiet clucks. Then, Eleanor got louder and louder, which set Marge off. Buck- buck- BUKS! Then, Petunia had to try out the nesting boxes. She wiggled her butt and settled into the middle one on the bottom. Had second thoughts and decided to try the one to the left. Gave a chortle of admiration for the fluffy pine shavings, then got up and went to the nesting boxes above. By the time I left the barn, she’d tried out four of the six boxes.

So, it seems as if the hens enjoy spring cleaning as much as I do.

This catalog of pricey clothes and bed linens came in the mail last week. Look at the image they are using to sell their goods – farmstead eggs! (I don’t know of any large farms raising Americaunas – so I’m confident that these pretty blue eggs came from a small flock.)

I was disappointed that the clothes models weren’t posed in farmyards with chickens. In fact there was nary a hen in sight. Still, I felt just a tad more trendy out in the barn collecting eggs. Perrie lays a blue egg as pretty as the one in this catalog. Edwina’s eggs are speckled. The party girls lay dainty white eggs. The nesting boxes in my barn are filled with eggs as pretty as a picture – even more photogenic than the ones on this catalog cover- and better yet, not only do I have the eggs, but I have my feathered friends, as well.

What’s your worse nightmare? Taking a final exam naked? Zombies?

We food professionals have our own anxieties. A few nights ago I woke up in a sweat- I dreamt that I was in a restaurant kitchen plating pie slices and that I was using canned whip cream.