Everyone has heard of the term pecking order, and we all knew, when starting out, that our own flocks will be party to that most basic of chicken behaviors. Still, the beginning chicken keeper is often taken aback at what goes on. Chest thumping, feather pulling, blood letting! It’s not pretty and it doesn’t look nice. In the worst case scenario, a picked on hen will be killed by the others. This happens. Some people ascribe all sorts of bad intentions to the offending “bullies” but in truth the animals are not at fault, for their behavior is due to how we manage their care. It’s up to us to control the flock dynamics to have the best scenario, that of a peaceful, healthy flock where everyone lives amicably together.

Pecking order, and as the term implies, is established by using their beaks. But, that does not mean that the hens spend their days attacking each other. A group of chickens should quickly reach an agreement, and each hen will know her status. Status determines who gets the best tidbit and who gets to sleep in the prime spot on the roosts. Think of the pecking order as a resource guarding. Hens want to keep the best things for themselves and the pecking order determines first dibs. Despite the fact that chickens have no qualms about bossing underlings around, once the pecking order is set the flock should be peaceful with no obvious bullying, and certainly no terrorizing the low status birds into corners or drawing blood!

Chicks that grow up together rarely have issues. They’ve figured out who’s on top from early on. As the pullets mature there might be a few spiffs as a hen gets larger and bolder, but there shouldn’t be anything dramatic or bloody. Because, as much as it’s called “pecking order” the hens have all sorts of body language that they use before they have to resort to stabbing each other with their pointy beaks, and the low-status birds are smart enough to get out of the way.

It is personality, not size that determines who is on top. I’ve found that the breeds that are the most active foragers and need the most space, such as Barred Rocks, Wyandottes and Rhode Island Reds, tend to be the dominant ones, and the Orpingtons, Cochins and Polish lower down. But, there are always exceptions. My first Bantam White Leghorn, a petite hen, was the queen of the barnyard for years.

If you have a flock of hens that know each other well (no new girls coming in) then all should be peaceful. If there are frequent squabbles, or if a hen is getting bloodied, then you have a management issue.

The most common reason for pecking order violence is crowding. Each hen needs a minimum of 4 square feet of floor space inside and another 8 outside. Be aware that there are times when the chickens won’t be spread out evenly. Take a look at your hens’ accomodations during inclement weather. Are they crammed together? If your hens are attacking each other, but have space, then reorganizing the coop can sometimes relieve the pressure. Adding outside roosts can give the lower status hens a place to go, or conversely, a perch from which the high-status hens can survey their realm. It doesn’t matter which, what matters is that the hens can move freely away from each other and have their own places. Chickens are greedy and possessive about food. Hang the feeder so that the hens can circle around it and no one gets trapped in a corner when trying to eat. Add a second waterer outside. When providing treats, set them out in several places.

Chickens get bored, and hens kept in small dirt pens will get in trouble. That’s why I don’t give treats like corn that they quickly gobble up, but instead provide a compost in the run so that they have an interesting place to scratch for hours. That’s also why I give them pumpkins in the fall,

hang a cabbage in the run when they’re closed up due to snow,

and why I’ll toss them clods of dirt and weeds in the summer.

It’s rare (it’s only happened once here in 20 years) that you’ll have a hen who is a bully and despite having everything that she needs, goes after the other hens with an unrelenting viciousness. Remove her from the flock for four days. Put her out of sight. When she is returned she will be at the bottom of the pecking order and she will rarely go back to her aggressive ways. If she does, get rid of her.

There are times when the pecking order gets upset. If a hen becomes ill the others will go after her. Chickens recognize each other by their combs, and a change in it’s color (which can happen at the onset of illness before you notice something is wrong) will set them off. If all of a sudden your flock dynamic has changed, take a look at your hens’ health! If a chicken does become wounded, the red blood will make her a target of the entire flock. If it’s not severe, darken the exposed skin with Dr. Naylor Blu-Kote Pump Spray (4 oz.) - Fast Drying Antiseptic Wound Dressing (a purple antiseptic), if it’s open and bloody, remove her from the group until healed.

Pecking order is always disturbed when new chickens are introduced. Even if you have only one hen, and think to add a second as a friend you’ll have aggression – just because you like that new chicken doesn’t mean that your hen will immediately bond with her. During a normal bit of sorting out there will be chest thumping and running at each other. This can go on for days, but things should quiet down. It can be especially difficult adding one young pullet to a flock of hens.  I have tips on how to merge new hens into an established flock here. Sometimes the attacks seem endless and they can be severe. I’ve seen a hen jump on another’s back to pin her down and fiercely peck at the head. Chickens doing that can kill. Roosters don’t allow this sort of hen on hen attack, and stop it by interrupting the behavior. This is something that you can do, too. Sometimes all it takes is for you to pick up the bully and move her away from the hen that she is focused on. Do this a half-dozen times and she usually gets the message.  Don’t you become violent and swat or hit the offending hen. That won’t effectively communicate to her that she needs to cease her attacks. If you aren’t able to stop the bullying, then remove her from the group for a couple of days while the new hens settle in.

A flock of hens that all get along is a pleasure to have in the backyard. However, underneath their cheerful clucking, the pecking order is always simmering. If you pay attention to your hens’ behavior, health and resources, it won’t boil over, and you’ll all be happy.

All animals, from crustaceans to humans, are hosts, both inside and out, to multitudes of bacteria and viruses. Kept in check they actually keep us healthy. Some bacteria even do essential body processes. For example, goats need bacteria in their guts to digest grass. New research shows that even the so-called “bad bacteria” have important roles to play. It’s when things get out of balance that health issues occur.

The chickens in our backyards carry around their share of germs and it’s prudent to worry about whether we can get sick from them. The quick answer is that there are very few diseases that humans and birds share. Our biologies are just too different. That said, there are a small number of pathogens to know about, all of which can be neutralized by hand washing and good animal husbandry. The truly scary diseases are not coming from the backyard flock, they’re coming from animal factories (let’s not call them “farms.”)  I’m not going to go into a diatribe here about how crowded factory production facilities that rely on antibiotics to keep their animals alive are creating “superbugs” that are resistant to drugs, I’m sure you’ve read this on-going story in the press. Instead, let’s go over what you need to know about the hens in your backyard.

The biggest fear that many have is of Bird Flu. The first cases of H5N2 appeared in North America in December of 2014. This is highly pathogenic to poultry, but at this point is not a concern to humans. Cases in the news of people getting sick are almost always in situations in which many dead and diseased birds are handled in close and unsanitary conditions. Even in those situations, the symptoms are mild. There are no cases of human to human transmission. However, our backyard flocks are in danger of contracting H5N2 – and it will decimate your flock. Wild waterfowl are the main vector and so it’s prudent to keep your chickens away from ponds and other areas that migratory birds congregate.

Another disease that you might have heard is zoonotic (transmissible from animal to human) is Newcastle Disease. Rest assured that it isn’t of great concern for backyard chicken keepers. In chickens it causes respiratory ailments. Transmitted to humans it triggers mild conjunctivitis, but even this is usually only seen in people who administer the Newcastle vaccine to poultry, or are lab workers who do necropsies. Two other zoonotic diseases are erysipelas and chlamydiosis, which are mostly hosted by turkeys, and only affect humans who work in slaughterhouses, and farmers of large flocks. Avian tuberculosis is another one that is quite rare (it’s more prevalent with parrot fanciers) but possible to contract.

Internal and external parasites are species specific and as nasty as lice and worms look, they’re not going to infect your gut if you somehow ingest them. The three bacterial pathogens that are of concern are Salmonella spp., Campylobacter spp., and E. coli. Generally, people get sickened by these bugs after eating improperly cooked and handled meat and eggs that have been contaminated with the germs, not by handling live and healthy chickens. Yes, poultry harbor these pathogens in their systems, but simply washing your hands after holding your hens is generally enough to prevent disease transmission. One exception that occurred recently involved chicks from large hatcheries. Children who kissed the chicks came down with salmonella.

Other issues that might come up, but that aren’t transmissible diseases, are allergies, and respiratory irritations due to mold and dust. Some people are allergic to the dander that chickens are constantly making as they grow and shed feathers. Chickens also create a fine dust out of bedding material and manure that they shred to bits as they scratch the ground. Sometimes bedding or feed will become moldy, especially if there’s been a long rainy period. Any respiratory and allergic reactions to these irritants can be minimized when one practices good manure management, and has a well-ventilated and dry coop.
An article published by the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences put it well. People should not fear close association with poultry as a significant human health risk. So, enjoy your hens. Handle them and spend time with them. Just don’t kiss them.

A hen goes about her day, sleeping, eating, dust bathing, scratching the ground, and generally doing chicken things. She’ll lay an egg daily, or at least  several times a week. She’ll take a break to molt in the fall, and won’t lay again until the darkest days of winter are over, but, generally, she’s active and productive. So, one day in the summer, when you step into the coop and your chicken is flattened like a platter in the nesting box, and she makes a horrid rasping noise, you worry. You pick her up and set her down on the ground and she remains fluffed out to three times her size and doesn’t move. The other hens either avoid her or rush up and peck her comb. She hurries back into the nest and yells at you. She does this day after day. She pulls the feathers out of her breast. You worry that she’s not eating. She’s certainly not laying.

She’s not ill. You have a broody hen.

A broody hen is one who thinks that she is incubating eggs to hatch. It doesn’t matter that there’s nothing under her, although sometimes there is. She’ll sit on eggs that the others have laid. Sometimes a broody will kick a hen out of a nesting box and in her deranged state smash the very eggs that she’s claiming. Sometimes a broody will even sit on top of a hen that is laying. Incubation is three weeks and a broody hen might stay in a box for that entire time. Or longer. Some hens are genetically programmed to go broody. Some never do. There are breeds more prone to broodiness, such as the Cochins, Silkies and Buff Orpingtons.

You might not see her do it, but once a day a broody hen will get up and out of the nesting box, leave a ginormous stinky pile of poo, and eat and drink. She might even take a dust bath. Then she’ll go back on her nest. She’ll sit there, even on dangerously hot days when everyone else is staying cool in the shade. She won’t starve, but she will lose condition. You’ll want to do something.

If you’ve always wanted to hatch chicks, then this is your chance to do it without an incubator or a brooder. She’ll do the job. Just remember that at least half of the chicks will be boys, and you’ll need a plan about what to do with them. If this broodiness happens to coincide with an arrival of an order of day-old chicks, you can pop them under her at night and when she wakes up in the morning, she’ll be tremendously proud of herself. (Actually, there’s more to it that this – the broody that is going to care for chicks should be in separate housing.) However, this post isn’t about raising chicks. It’s about what to do about that angry, useless hen that is now taking up space in your coop and annoying anyone within a hundred yards of her.

You can ignore her. At some point she’ll stop being broody. That’s what I do with Pearl, the most perfect broody hen in the world. Pearl is a cochin. She spends the majority of her time filling up a nesting box. But she also gets up and out several times a day, especially if she hears that there are yummy things in the compost pile. She dust bathes. She takes a half-hour to free-range with the other girls. She doesn’t threaten any of them. She’s not laying, but she’s so content and true to herself that I let her be.

 

Unfortunately, most broodies aren’t perfect like Pearl. Instead, they’re horrors, like Topaz. Topaz is a Buff Orpington. When she goes broody she becomes henzilla – the angriest hen on the planet. She smashes eggs. She growls at hens and people alike. Lulu, a Speckled Sussex, was equally bonkers when broody.

 

To break the spell, I put the broody hen into the anti-broody coop, which was originally an old rabbit hutch.

I supply the hen with food and water. There’s no place to nest and nothing to do. The wire floor allows for air circulation under her. This is essential, as broodiness is tied into an elevated body temp, and bringing it down will help to break the broody cycle. Some people claim that you can do this quickly by giving the hen a soak in cold water. I hosed down Topaz’s butt. It did nothing but make her wet and angrier. Some people say that you can slip a cold pack (or package of frozen peas) under her in the nesting box to chill her off. I did this and Topaz was delighted to have something to brood and it did nothing to break the spell. What does work is three days in the anti-broody coop. You’ll know your hen is back to normal when she greets you with normal clucks and is back to having her feathers at her side.

Some hens are persistently broody. After time in the anti-broody coop, Topaz will return to normal and lay eggs, and then a few weeks down the road will go broody again. She is a serial broody. Some will go broody only once and that will be it for the season. If your broody hen lives into old age, at some point she’ll stop going broody. Twinkydink was six the first year that she didn’t hunker down in a

. In her seventh year she started laying eggs again (sporadically, but still, she laid!) So, you never know.

Making an accurate diagnosis for a hen that looks sick, but doesn’t have respiratory symptoms, is nigh on impossible. Chickens exhibit the same symptoms for a myriad of diseases. Walking like a penguin, standing hunched with wings down, a dark comb, off-feed, a hitch in the gait, droopiness, and straining when laying, can be due to a long list of diseases including but not limited to:  cancer, tumors, peritonitis, internal laying, egg bound, and ascites. Sadly, most of those issues cannot be cured. Some hens will die soon after you see the symptoms,  others can live for a long time looking poorly. I had a Barred Rock hen, Eleanor, that lived for three years in a slow and crotchety way, and it was only after death, when I did a necropsy, that I was able to determine that she was an internal layer with many other health issues.

But sometimes, the hen does not have a lethal disease. Sometimes the hen has what I call an imbalance of inputs and outputs. What the hen eats and drinks is equal to what she ejects in the forms of manure and eggs. The egg is mostly protein and minerals. This process of making those eggs, day after day, is depleting, and as the hen ages it gets increasingly harder for her to replenish her system. It can go out of whack. Often, when this is the issue, your hen’s comb will change color and she’ll hunch up and barely move. (See Agnes’ story here.) If this is the case, then the Spa Treatment can help. It also is effective when a hen has ingested toxic plants.

The Spa Treatment is also effective in fixing minor blockages. Sometimes the hen has a mild glitch in her intestinal or reproductive tract. Her muscles need to contract to move things along, and perhaps they’ve weakened. Sometimes an egg forms incorrectly, and the resulting mass is hard to expel. The Spa Treatment will move things along.

What I call The Spa Treatment is simply a nice long soak in an

 bath, a dose of olive oil, and TLC. Epsom salt is a combination of magnesium and sulfate. You can find it in the pharmacy, as it’s used by people as a laxative and as a foot soak. For such a simple and inexpensive product, it has many curative functions. The magnesium improves circulatory health, flushes toxins, improves muscle and nerve function, maintains the proper level of calcium in the blood and increases oxygen use. The sulfates help form brain tissues and joint proteins, creates mucin proteins that line the digestive tract, detoxifies contaminants, and improves absorption of nutrients. Obviously, it’s a general and potent cure-all. Fortunately, it is absorbed readily through the skin, which makes treatment with it easy.

So, how do you know if what ails your hen can be helped by the Spa Treatment?

As always, when you suspect that your hen isn’t well, it’s best to isolate her for a day. This enables you to see whether she’s eating, if she’s producing manure, and if so, what it’s like. You’ll also see if she’s laying. These are all clues to whether there is a blockage (nothing coming out) or an infection (nasty looking manure) or an egg laying issue. (Soft egg? No egg but a runny discharge? Egg bound?) In many of these cases, I’ve had success using the Spa Treatment. Sometimes, after treatment, the hen will go on to be healthy for a few more weeks, sometimes for years – it all depends on whether there is an underlying issue that can be fixed, or if there is a terminal ailment. For example, Agnes recovered nicely after her spa treatment for about ten days, but then went back into decline. Her necropsy showed that she died of ovarian cancer. But Buffy, who received the Spa Treatment because she ingested too much vetch, a pasture plant which is toxic in large doses, recovered fully. Another time, Buffy’s comb turned dark and she became listless, again, she recovered fully. The Spa Treatment can’t hurt, and I’ve never known a hen who didn’t enjoy it;  it just might save your hen.

The first step in the Spa Treatment is to give your hen an epsom salt soak. Fill a tub with water that is warm but not too hot, the temperature that you would want to bathe in. Add a cup of epsom salt to the water. Set your hen into the tub. Few hens struggle to get out. Yours should settle right in. You might have to gently encourage her to sit down. The water should come up to her chest, but no higher. Let her soak until the water cools. If she is particularly poopy or dirty, you can use soap and wash her, then refill the tub with water and epsom salts and soak again. (To see how to bathe a hen, watch my YouTube video.) Gently lift her out of the bath and pat dry with a towel, then use a blow dryer on low. The hens like that, too!

Next in the Spa Treatment is to dose with olive oil. Enabling a hen to clear out her intestinal tract can often set a hen right.Hopefully, your hen is strong enough to eat. Two teaspoons of olive oil helps to move whatever is in her system along. The easiest way to give this to her is to put it on her favorite treat and let her eat it (try it in cooked oatmeal or pieces of bread.) If your hen is not able to peck at and swallow even her favorite treat, then she is likely too sick for the Spa Treatment to work.

Lastly, she needs TLC. If the hen likes being in the quiet safety of a dog crate, away from bullying hens, give her some time on her own. If she prefers to be with the flock, put her back with her friends. Hopefully, all of this care will alleviate the symptoms. If the Spa Treatment is going to help your hen, you’ll know within twenty-four hours. If you see a positive change in your bird, you can give the treatment one more time. However, if there is no change, then whatever she has is more serious that than the Spa Treatment can help. If it doesn’t help, at least it hasn’t hurt, and you’ll have narrowed down what might be causing the symptoms. The Spa Treatment has fixed several of my birds, and helped many others. If you have success with the Spa Treatment, do let me know! The more case histories I hear about, the better advice I can give.