Things I have learned about chickens and chicken drama
My boyfriend and I recently joined a community garden that has an aging flock of chickens. I love them, which I had not expected. They make soft noises and love to eat snacks, and sometimes they perch on this big high-up branch in their coop as if they are real birds, which I guess they technically are.
They are not equally amazing. One of the chickens, another community garden member informed us, has a “disgusting butt” and is “weird.”
My favorite chicken is Dolly. She is huge, with stupid proportions of head-to-body and gleaming white feathers and sad eyes.
I thought she would be at the top of the coop’s pecking order (which is a real thing), because she is hottest and cleanest, but apparently the harsh hierarchies of chicken society are more mysterious than that. Dolly is at the bottom, and is constantly disrespected and maligned.
The other day, all of the chickens were out of the coop while we cleaned their poop and feathers off the ledges. Dolly and the other lowly chicken, Sweet Pea, did not want to leave the coop to play with the others, which was sort of devastating and brought up uncomfortable memories for some of us.
Their anxiety was partly due to the arrival of two new girls: Porridge and Eleanor.
Porridge and Eleanor are slender and fancy-looking, with perfect waddly red combs. I initially thought I would like Eleanor, because we have the same name and she looks funny when she runs.
But it turns out that they are both bitches and tyrannical peckers, with a taste for violence against the bottom-rung girls. They continually sprinted after Dolly and Sweet Pea, who eventually cornered themselves inside of a metal cage as their bullies approached. We all yelled, and someone said “get the stick!” and everyone was shooed out with oat treats.
I ended up holding Dolly, which she seemed to prefer to being on the ground with the other chickens, none of whom respected her space or boundaries or personhood.
When you hold a chicken, FYI, you have to hold their feet, which look like dragon feet up close.
I am not sure if Dolly will ever move up in the pecking order. But I will keep petting her and enjoying her company.
Even though I have recently learned about all the diseases you can catch from live chickens.
Top image via Shutterstock.
my in-laws also have chickens named dolly (parton) and sweet pea :)