For the fourth successive day (possibly the fifth, but we didn’t think to look on their first morning here), all four chickens emerged first thing in strict pecking order – first Pearl and Vi, then a pause, then Queenie, and then, after a much longer pause, little Ida, who often seizes the opportunity to have a proper lie-in (or perch-in) without getting pecked.
(aka Pearl and Queenie caught in a high wind)
If only the luckless film crew in Cannibal Holocaust had brought along supplies of this anti-cannibalism spray, they might have lived to tell the tale. But they didn’t.
When I posted this on Facebook, my friend Mike Strick pointed out that “Feather Pecking Spray sounds like the TV edit of a Samuel L Jackson expletive”, which is hard to argue with.
The chickens haven’t quite got used to us entering the pen yet – do you think this would make a difference?
(Entirely coincidentally, the film from which this still was taken, Jan Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure, is getting its British DVD premiere this week, though it’s possibly of more interest to fans of sexually suggestive surrealism than chicken-rearing per se.)
Pearl (bottom left) is on the poultry equivalent of the naughty step (actually a sub-pen made from chicken wire and bricks) in an attempt to stop her bullying poor Ida (top right), who’s seizing the opportunity to have a drink.
UPDATE: We thought we’d have to do this every day, but in fact Ida’s confidence increased massively from this point on, so it’s been a one-off thus far. But we’ve left the bricks in the pen so we can re-install the fence at a moment’s notice.
We woke up to a vivid illustration of where the phrase “the pecking order” originally came from, which was reinforced throughout the day. Pearl, the biggest and meanest, is firmly at the top, then Vi, Queenie and finally poor little Ida, the smallest and youngest – who spent almost the entire day in the chicken house refusing to come out.
We were actually quite worried about her by the end of the day, considering such drastic steps as returning her to the farm or possibly getting another Chalk Hill Blue of similar age and size – but we thought we’d give her a few days first to see if she settled down.
UPDATE: And she did, with a vengeance – to the point where the pecking order will probably be recalibrated in the not too distant future. Especially since Ida is still growing.
Clockwise from top left they’re Vi, Ida, Pearl and Queenie, transported in two cardboard boxes by car from a farm somewhere between Chichester and Havant, and there was a fair amount of evidence both during (audible) and after (the state of the boxes) the journey that suggested that they didn’t enjoy it very much. Still, they’re here now, and the adventure begins.
