Well, here it is the final plan implemented for Bloody Mary the chicken. It has been a lot of fun working with these chickens and better understanding their habits and how they all get along! If you haven't been following along about 3 months ago we noticed one of our chickens was getting bullied and picked on very badly. We rescued it and brought it inside to live in a dog crate until it healed up. The kids wanted to name here Mary and so the fitting name of Bloody Mary was born. After she was healed we tried to experiment with different ways to get he back out into the coop. The first was doomed for failure from the start but I wanted to see for myself how the chickens interacted with Mary once she was all healthy and touch again. Perhaps she was sick and that is why they started picking on her to start with. Now she was healthy and strong and ready to defend herself. Nope, wrong, as soon as I put her out they all went right after her and started drawing blood again. Time for plan B! Plan B was to have her outside the coop in the yard for a few days so they could see her and then sneak her in at night. Fail! She came out the next morning and they attacker her again. Time for plan C! Plan C was my last chance before Mary became a permanent outsider or maybe chicken dinner:) The problem here was that Mary seemed to be at the bottom of the pecking order and I noticed there were a few chickens that seemed more aggressive than the others - meet "the jerks". I took Mary outside and let her scratch around near the coop on a nice day in March. I then took each chicken out of the coop one at a time and set it down near Mary, if they attacked I swopped it to protect Mary and then labelled them as a "jerk". The nice chickens got a black marked on their foot and the jerks were markless. It ended up that we had two nice chickens to hang out with Mary and three jerks for the time-out box. I took the jerks to the basement and showed them their new quarters, kind of cramped isn't it jerks! So the plan was to wait one week with Mary and her new friends outside running the coop and then each week take one chicken out to the coop. I tried to pick the nicest jerk first and took her outside. There were some minor scuffles but all seemed ok after the first day. After another week I took the next jerk out and there were some more scuffles (this time a bit more intense) but after a day or two all was well. Mary was still a little nervous around the last one I had brought out at this point but she was making it just fine. After another week I brought out the last chicken, it was world war three! There we fights, feathers were ruffled, blood flew, and in the end the most dominant hen (the last one I brought out) was reduced to the bottom of the order. She was now paying for her sins:) Interestingly enough this chicken became best buds with Mary and they spent the next few days attached as if best friends since kindergarten. It has now been a few weeks since we put the last chicken out and they have all been living together in relative harmony. Mary is still a "chicken" pun intended. She stays away from the new dominant chicken and spends some of her time alone while in the yard. But, in the end she has been huddled up with all her sisters on many occasions and seems to be a functioning part of the flock again. Plan C was a win! General Store - http://astore.amazon.com/simpsubulivi-20 Please check us out at www.simplesuburbanliving.com and follow us on.... http://www.pinterest.com/simplesuburban/ http://www.facebook.com/simplesuburbanliving http://www.twitter.com/simplesuburban5 http://www.instagram.com/simplesuburbanliving

• published: 15 Apr 2016
• views: 142