We all know that the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Make that chickens and men and you'll get a taste of what my life has been like in recent days.
When my wife Liz and I doubled the size of our tiny flock from two to four hens with the arrival of two Rhode Island Red pullets on May 8, we figured there would be a noisy period of adjustment while old-timers Snow and Nala let the new kids know who rules the roost.
As it turned out, establishing a new pecking order has been more troublesome than we anticipated. The four hens shared the same roost that first night, but when we let them out of the coop and into the pen the following morning, all hell broke loose. The pecking and squawking and infighting dragged on for hours. By late morning, one of the Reds was cowering in a corner of the coop. The other one was desperately trying to push her way through the wire that encloses the open area under the coop.
So we moved the Reds - later named Hope and Nellie - into a separate, freestanding pen, to let things settle down a bit.
I suppose “the girls” would have worked things out eventually, once we reunited them, but then another problem emerged. As I mentioned earlier, Hope and Nellie are pullets. They’re less than five months old, and they aren’t supposed to start laying for another month or so. In effect, they’re the chicken equivalent of teenagers. And because of their age, they’re still on what is known as “growth” feed, rather than the “laying” feed that the older hens eat.
Snow and Nala are nothing if not voracious. If we reunited all four hens and placed both growth feed and laying feed in their pen, the odds are Snow and Nala would scarf down not only their own food, but the pullets’ food as well.
So although the four hens share the coop at night, Snow and Nala still have “their” coop and pen to themselves during the day, while Hope and Nellie hang out in that adjacent freestanding pen. Every morning, we move the Reds from the coop into their separate pen. And every night, we move them back into the coop, where the four hens quickly nod off once it's dark out.
That means my job as a landlord has morphed from taking care of one housing unit to running the chicken equivalent of an apartment complex. With complimentary transportation services.
And to think I had no prior experience with property management.
