#flock integration

[continent-of-wild-endeavor]

New rooster is in a spare rabbit cage in the chicken coop enclosure for a couple of days, so he and the big girls can get to know each other without being able to damage one another. The ladies have mounted a protest about this stranger in their midst. Noisy hens all day, and the gold one & Ralph refused to go to bed. Luckily it's easy to move a sleepy chicken, so I just picked them up off the outdoor roost & the fence, respectively, and popped them in through the coop door. Over more chickeny protestations, of course.

Tomorrow or the next night, we'll go out when they're all asleep and sneak the rooster into the coop. Then they'll all wake up and come out together in the morning, hopefully believing they're all one flock.

[deweydecimalchickens]

When I get a lone hen new friends because they're a social species and it's necessary for their welfare, that's basically like when Holly resurrected Rimmer to keep Lister sane. That's what I'm doing. And the outraged screams of the original hen as she defends her territory and status are Lister explaining to Holly that all those statistically significant interactions were "me telling him to smeg off, and him putting me on report for telling him to smeg off".

This integration is actually going better than most, touch wood. Allie pre-empted matters by being better at flying than I was at increasing the height of the separation fence. Nyx basically tolerates them as long as they don't try to eat out of the same bowl as her (I have four bowls for three chickens, it's fine, everyone gets to eat) and only doles out a couple of head-donks when provoked. My top hens have varied wildly in temperament (RIP Angry Vel the Birdzilla) but Nyx looks like being one of the calmer ones.

[deweydecimalchickens]

Medusaceratops and Fluffy the Terrible are having PLAY DATES, you guys. Well, supervised visitation where everyone stays in their crates and quarantine is not broken. But they're looking at each other and chatting in soft booping noises. They both seem happier to see another chicken.