Finally a new post after unbelievable four-month-long break.
The blog might have looked dead but the farm is alive and well: Chickens and goats are thriving and solar panels seem to be mostly okay too (what a relief).
Having more work than before, I have less time to spend with our chickens and goats (and to write about it). This is a pity because it's always exciting to secretly spy on them while they think they are spying on me (and then share the details with our anonymous online audience).
Today I want to write about our chickens' social order, or as hoomans call it, pecking order. For those who think this is a boring topic: You'd be surprised how similar chicken society is to human society (that is, before humans invented "equality" and "human rights" for themselves). I will especially talk about Ashiko, the chicken at the social bottom of our flock.
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| Ashiko! |
Being at the social bottom is usually a bad thing, but on our farm, this means that Ashiko is our favorite hen and gets special benefits. This is because of our farm's philosophy "No chicken left behind." (If our farm was a country, it would be a more notorious welfare state than Finland)
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| Click on picture to see it clearly. |
As there are now only nine chickens (and six goats) on the farm, it's easy to see the social structure quite clearly.
Of the nine chickens, eight are hens and one is rooster. The rooster, Justin, has a unique place in the flock, as roosters usually have, so the social order I'm going to describe will be mostly about the eight hens.
(Regarding the rooster's position, it's hard to say whether it's low or high. This is because Justin is inconsistent and seems unable to decide whether he wants to be the leader or not. He likes to keep low profile and blend with the hens, except for the occasional half-hearted attacks on enemies like small children, Nobuo, and me.)
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| Justin the Rooster (center) trying to blend in. |
So, the eight hens.
The top hen in our flock is Maruko.
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| Maruko! (Please ignore the photobombers.) |
Not that it would matter, but Maruko is the prettiest hen in our flock. She has beautiful feather coat, which I guess is both a reason and a consequence of her high status. During meal time, she can choose whatever feed tray she wants and no one will challenge her. She is never pecked at by any other hen. This means she gets the best nutrition as well as zero external damage (and she just seems to never molt), so her beautiful coat is not a coincidence. Btw the chicken on the title photograph of this blog is also Maruko.
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| Front: Maruko the Chicken. Back: Tobi-chan the Goat. |
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| Poker smile |
When I do some digging or weeding in the chickens' run, Maruko is the one who comes close to "help" and gets all the bugs and worms that come out of the soil. These are delicacies and all hens crave for them, but Maruko somehow has the privilege to come first and get the best bugs. Other hens wait nearby for their chance.
Despite of (or because of) Maruko being the most dominant hen, I can hardly recall seeing her being aggressive, like attacking other hens for no reason. From which I assume Maruko is a born leader with natural authority.
Below Maruko, there are the upper class hens, then the lower class hens, and then there's Ashiko.
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| Social stairs (ladder was too difficult to draw) |
Ashiko is at the very bottom. In most social groups this is unfortunate position, but on our farm, any hen (or goat) that falls into the lowest position immediately gets V.I.P. protected status. This wasn't always the case. Before, our philosophy was to give chickens autonomy and let them solve their disputes on their own. But Ashiko taught us that we can do better.
Ashiko's bullying started some six months ago. The trigger was her getting sick and limping on one leg as a result.
This made her different enough from other chickens to become a target of bullying. Chickens hate diversity, you know. (Just as many goats, dogs and humans do.) If chickens wanted to inscribe a motto on the wall, it would be: "Either you are like us, or you are an enemy."
We noticed that Ashiko's was being chased away during meal times (but a hen can go back to feed when other chickens finish eating) and generally picked on for no reason. It wasn't so bad, however. So we didn't step in - who would want that kind of micromanagement. Our chickens' run is big, I thought, so even if a hen turns out to be unpopular, she can always hide away from her bullies, I reasoned. I was convinced that the terrible cases of group aggression (pecking a hen to death) only happen on other farms with stressed-out chickens crammed in cages or in a barn.
That's what I believed until one day I found Ashiko sleeping outside, not in the coop with other hens but alone, with dark blood marks on her crest and one of her eyes closed as if she had an injury. She looked miserable.
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| Ashiko the day after attack (already in her private room.) |
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| You can see that one eye is closed. |
This was a shock and a wake-up lesson. This has been the only case of such bullying on our farm, but it proves that even stress-free environment and a big outdoor run cannot always guarantee well-being of all chickens in the flock.
The moment we found Ashiko like that, we changed our philosophy from "leave it to the chickens" to "early intervention." For Ashiko the intervention came a bit late, but not too late. Ashiko immediately qualified for protected status. She got a private room, where she would get all her meals separately from other hens and she would also sleep there. She got a special run separated from other chickens.
This arrangement lasted for several months. Ashiko completely recovered, including her eye, which at first we thought was permanently damaged. Luckily it wasn't.
Now Ashiko is back with the flock, and although she is still at the bottom of the hierarchy, she's now same-enough to be tolerated by other hens.
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| Ashiko socializing with other chickens. (Preening is important group activity. Standing this close to other hens is an achievement for a previously bullied chicken) |
On the weekends she sometimes still gets her meals separately and gets a special time in her own run. This is more because Ashiko now expects these privileges than because she needs them :D
Right now there are just nine chickens and six goats, so it's easy to make sure every single one of them is happy. But imagine we had 30 or 50 or 100 chickens, and we still would want to run the farm by the "No chicken left behind" philosophy. So the big question is, how to make this work on a bigger scale. Meanwhile, we're happy to see Ashiko integrated back in the flock and living her carefree chicken life.
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| The hero at the bottom :) |