Flock Wars

The coop management alert has slid from the DEFCON 1 triggered by the murder of 2 chicks at the talons of the pullets to an uneasy DEFCON 5. I amnae at all certain the pullets and the chicks recognize one another as the same species. The appearance diffs between chick down and chicken feathers is even more dramatic than the appearance diffs between the Palestinians and Isralies. Lucky for coop managers, those particulars change over a period of weeks. Since DEFCON 1 was triggered, the chicks have grown enough feathers to begin looking like chickens.

The confused adolescants had begun losing their street gang tactics and growing a modicum of tolerance for the alien invaders when a trip to the feed store found me walking away with the impulse purchase of 6 broad-breasted turkey poults, 3 bronze and 3 white. Some day I will learn to do my research before I impulse buy my way into new headaches. . . It turns out the broad-breasted turkeys are bio-engineered "meat birds" who grow so fast and so big that it is an act of cruelty to let them live to 6 months. By then, they are carrying more weight than avian bones are designed to carry, with all of the relative health problems. In 4 weeks they will be bigger than the bantam pullets will ever be. Reproduction is possible for them, but typically more trouble than it is worth. By the time their wings develop, they will be too big for flight. What the fuck did I get myself into this time?

But for today, they are smaller than the smallest of the chicks and a source of equal agitation to both the chick and pullet flocks. They remain two notably different flocks and pullets still have the size advantage on the jockeying for prime guard spots, but the chicks are interested enough to challenge those boundaries at every opportunity. The pullets are too busy tending their new guard posts to notice that claiming that new ground has allowed the chicks free access to the spots they guarded jealously before the arrival of the *common enemy*. I donae believe the chicks have noticed their victory. Their attention is on the same target.

As a safeguard against another round of murderous curiosity from the adolescants, I added a hardwire space reducer to the door of the brood cage. The new door is framed in the hardwire spikes from cutting the door. The pullets can fit their heads through the opening, but the hardwire spikes will bite viciously at their shoulders. The biggest of the chicks is already too big to fit through. The second biggest willnae be able to fit through next week. The poults can pass with impunity when I leave the original cage door open, but they arenae in any hurry to do so. They appear appreciative of their safe zone inside the cage. For now, it appears safe to rest at DEFCON 1 --maybe DEFCON 2?-- for as long as that brood cage door is closed.