I have heard the old saying- birds of a feather flock together. Until I spent time with chickens I didn't know how true it was. I figured we were talking about chickens flocking, ducks congregating, but it's more specific than that.
Birds of certain colorways and breeds stick together. My three Welsummers travel together.. a threesome in all things, feeding, hiding, complaining. My Buff Orpingtons slept together. Birds who are able to identify another bird exactly the same breed as themselves stick together.
My first few birds included a brown leghorn and a white leghorn. They came from the same flock. The White Leghorn was the alpha female in my new flock, and the brown one was at the bottom- picked on and abused. When the brown one became ill, the white hen herded her into a dog crate that I had near the hen house and stood guard against the other chickens.
Chickens are mean to sick chickens. There is some sort of instinct that they pursue to kill sick chickens. They run them out of the house and let them die. But Alpha ushered her friend into a box with food and straw and stood guard at the door. In the end, the little brown hen died. She had serious wounds from the rooster that she did not recover from, despite my best intentions. Still, I was impressed by Alpha's loyalty.
So, birds of a feather really do stick together. Unto death.
This seems to start from the time of hatching, we hatched eight La Bresse,yellow chicks, four Jersey Giants,black chicks, and three Light Sussex, nearly white chicks, earlier this year, from the time they went into the brooder they grouped together according to colour.
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of La Bresse before...They are beautiful birds.
ReplyDeleteYes they are, not only are they good table birds they also produce a good number of eggs. It is hard tobuy either eggs to hatch or day olds to grow on, even here in Ireland. There are a couple of breeders around but the gene pool is limited here.
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