July 16, 2018
The “Bossy” Hen
Chickens all have their own personalities, but like humans, they tend to fall in categories. Today, we’ll discuss the bossy chicken.
This is the hen who thinks her feathers are better than everyone else’s. (That’s because she doesn’t see the white spots on the top of her head or the drooping rump feathers!)
She has the loudest cackle in the yard announcing when she laid an egg. (Her screaming can be heard over ten miles away and the other hens wish they had fingers to plug their ears!) She is absolutely sure that the most beautiful chicks in the nursery pen are hers, and will argue this point by pecking the other hens mercilessly.
She is the first at the water trough (unless Rex, the king rooster, is there) and shoos the other hens away from the fresh scraps tossed in the yard. (Of course, Rex doesn’t like a hen bossing his other hens around, so he will crow loudly, puff his feathers, and announce his dominance.)
Sometimes bossy hens will actually steal eggs from other hens and roll them into her nest!
They are fun to watch – and discuss.
One such hen is our Pearl. She is an old White Rock who seems jealous because she doesn’t lay eggs anymore so she swipes everyone else’s eggs and sits on them, cackling as if she just laid them! We keep her because she’s laid lots of eggs in her 4 years and she’s a pretty addition to our flock.
Another bossy hen is one of our Plymouth Barred Rocks, White-Head (so named because she has whiter feathers on her head than most females of her breed). She thinks all scraps are hers! She will chase every younger pullet away from the feeder too. If one of the roosters, especially Red, her favorite, goes after a younger pullet, she will act all fluffy (chickens fluff out their feathers to “fight”) and try to chase the younger pullet away! The roosters do not like this! White-Head lays 6 eggs every week and is an “Irma chick;” only about 8 months old. She just graduated from “pullet” to “hen!”
There’s plenty of entertainment “hen-watching” in my backyard!
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart
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