The last time we added hens to our existing flock, we only added two. Two big girls, ready to start laying any day. That was traumatic enough and a real eye-opener for me; I had to learn to dampen my feelings about competition and pecking order. (Can’t we all just get ALONG???)
But this time, with six new chicks joining our current four old gals, it’s been positively a whirlwind. Everything has more than doubled: the noise, the poop, the amount of beat-downs, how fast the food vanishes, the intense jostling for a position on the roosts at night. We desperately need these six young chickens to provide eggs (in a month or two), but it sure has been a chaotic couple of weeks trying to get them settled. I’m scrambling for more carbon (anyone have any dry bags of leaves I can have or old hay or sawdust?) and ordering layer feed at an astonishing rate.
Add this to the start of our rainy season (which means closer quarters), and you can imagine the impact. Tom rigged up a tarp so that there is some outdoor space for the chickens to go without getting soaked, and this has helped tremendously (chickens can handle cold, but cold and wet is difficult). I had to assist the little guys getting in and out of the hen house each night for about two nights; after that I put a stool in the coop (yes, really) and now they climb up that and fly up from there. I still go out to watch bedtime (anytime between 4:30 and 5) because we’ve had a few bad falls as the chickens all jostle for space. One of our older hens, Scrappy, fell three times through the hole with the ladder in it, because the other old hens didn’t like how aggressive she was being and they knocked her off. The little chicks just gambol around like drunks and they tend to make it ok, but they sure get knocked around a lot. They have to find the proper times to approach the food and water, the proper times to have a dust bath, the proper times to root through the compost pile, because the older chickens are keeping them firmly in line. However, they are growing fast, so I think they are getting enough to eat. They were raised in a dark shed with 500 other chicks, so all they have known before this is a dirt floor and the scramble for food of any kind. I imagine this new life is pretty great for them, despite the ‘lessons’ they are learning from the big girls. Bugs, sprouted grains, regular greens, leaf piles to get lost in - all of this must seem like wonderland.
Still, it’s a lot of chickens in a smallish space. Once spring comes and we see who’s really laying, there might be a reckoning.
Speaking of reckoning, I’m about to enter into finals. Chemistry is kind of like my own personal big chicken - knocking me around and teaching me a few life lessons. I’m the little guy, scrambling to keep up. I feel safe and well-fed, and then suddenly a big beak comes at me from behind and bites me in the ass.