Toey

Toey got her name because, a few years ago, the local Icelandic chicken breeder—who was open to selling us five of his less-than-perfect hens—also had a hen with broken toes that he was going to dispatch. So we adopted her, too. 

Toey is our best mother hen. She is consistently and obnoxiously broody. Last year, in the midst of a three-broody-hens hell, I caved and ordered seven chicks for them. After being advised that I didn’t want three mother hens around, Toey won the lottery and was given the babies. She raised them to be like all our other hens: feral and courageous and beautiful and quite sweet if you can catch them.

Unfortunately, when we later put Toey and her seven pullets together with the twelve other hens, they accepted the babies, but not Toey. Winter approached and we had one flock, though Toey was at the bottom of the pecking order. And then, with springtime, came her plummet into the hell where she has remained. 

This happened right around when Lucy died. Lucy was high up on the pecking order. The MyPetChicken people noted that Toey’s ostracization might just be the hens still in chaos from the mixed-up pecking order after Lucy’s death.

Two bitches—oh, pardon me, two evil sisters—Pearl Baily!? Copper!? I’m talking to you!!—jump on Toey anytime they get her alone. And pretty much all of the rest join in the attack. Such that, one day, we came home from a trip to Keene to find the back of Toey’s neck defeathered and bloodied. So, for weeks—months—we have had to keep Toey separated, setting up fencing so that she can have her own space, shade, sun, food, and water.

Only Toey’s pullets are nice to her. Daily, they decide which of them will keep her company. It’s getting to be a drag. Toey is miserable. Every evening, she races through the gauntlet of her sisters to the dog cage we have set up so that they don’t kill her in the night. Even so, it is clear she would prefer to be on the roost with her daughters. 

Instead? Petite Francoise is broody and sits on the nest in back of Toey brooooooding and clucking and Toey gets no rest. She is exhausted and stressed. Her eggs are soft-shelled. 

So we (upon the suggestion of MyPetChicken) have separated out the five meanest girls and put them in the Quonset hut area, leaving Toey to gallivant with the other hens in Cluckingham Palace.

Now my sympathies are with the five bedraggled hens under the Quonset hut, which has no dusting spa when it’s pouring rain. It behooves everyone to unite as one flock again, so the question is, which of the outlawed hens to reintroduce to the flock first? Each reintroduction will require a recalibration of the pecking order.

Prior to this, there’s been an occasional egg with a little hole in its shell, which indicates an egg-pecking hen. Not a good habit in a hen as chickens learn from example. The good news is, an egg in the Quonset hut had been pecked aggressively yesterday, so we’ve narrowed it down to one of the mean girls. I’ll have to put out ceramic eggs to break her of that habit. Their beaks are hard, but not that hard. Though Toey might disagree.