Hen Chronicles: Dogs and chickens . . . unpredictable mix

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love our dogs: Aquinnah, a handsome chocolate lab, and Martha, a black and white pit bull/lab mix. But I’d be the first to admit that they aren’t always little angels. Although they are not remotely aggressive, both have been known to bark at strangers - human and canine - from time to time. And Aquinnah (aka, Quinn) absolutely despises the U.S. Postal Service and its minions.

They have their moments.

So I didn’t know what to expect the other day when I tried, once again, to introduce the dogs to our chickens, Snow and Nala, by taking the pups to the coop at the back end of our lot. Since we brought the hens home more than a year ago now, we’ve generally shied away from venturing to the coop with the dogs, because earlier visits have not gone well.

Monday, I gave it another go, bringing each dog “out back” separately. The results were decidedly mixed.

First up was Martha. The hens kept a close eye on our “pitty” as Martha and I walked up to the front of their pen and then down one side of it. But Martha did not even make eye contact, acting for all the world like there weren’t two hens staring at her from behind the chicken wire. And the hens, although alert, remained calm, even though they were only inches away from Martha as she sauntered by.
 
Quinn was another story entirely. As soon as we got within eight feet of the pen, Snow and Nala went ballistic, squawking and jumping and flapping their wings and running around as if a pack of wolves had forced their way in. Reacting to the commotion, Quinn began whimpering as he tried to pull me closer to the pen. But he wasn’t barking or growling or lunging. He was more curious and confused than anything else.

I quickly pulled Quinn back toward the house, and the hens settled down almost immediately. But the bottom line is that it was the hens, not Quinn, who instigated this face-off.

So, why did “the girls” go nuts when they spotted Quinn, yet show no reaction when Martha got much closer to them than Quinn did? Was it because Quinn looked them in the eye but Martha did not? Was it Quinn’s imposing 83 pounds? (By comparison, Martha is puny at a mere 40 pounds, although that probably looks darn big to a chicken.) Did Quinn somehow project more of a threat, even though he was being relatively well-behaved? Or is there, perhaps, no comprehensible explanation for the fact that the hens were terrified in one case, but indifferent in the other?

I suppose if I consulted 10 people who have much more experience with chickens than I do, I’d get 10 different explanations for what happened. So perhaps it’s best to assume that the animal mind, like the human mind, can be mystifying. Which is all the more reason to maintain our well-established demilitarized zone between Planet Canine and Chicken Nation.