I introduced the new Hen to my brother and told him this was "Hazel my Lovely (Long time since you've seen the light of day)".
Yesterday I opened one of the doors to Hazel My Lovely's part of the run, and encouraged her outside with sunflower hearts. She spent a lot of time exploring, and we had to block off a couple of bits where she could get in and we couldn't get to her.
We decided to give her access to the entire garden, rather than sectioning an area off, so that she could come and see us for company. It also meant she could see the other girls and they could see her.
Predictably, she and Fay came beak to beak on one of Fay's excursions (Fay is unfenceable). There was a skirmish, and then a lot of ignoring. Hazel followed Fay, Fay ignore Hazel, Fay finally jumped back intot the main enclosure to escape Hazel.
Evening came, I shut the girls in their respective runs. After watching Hazel, I opened the top gate between the two runs, and left it open. Fay would be able to get in, most of the others wouldn't. I went out later to check that Hazel had found her way to bed and found her gone.
I checked the bushes in the run (it used to be our fruit cage, before we put a chicken run on it). Nope. I went into the main run, and found her roosting on the back of a wooden chair. I stroked her for a bit, and saw the others watching from the open coops (too hot to close the coop doors).
I decided to leave her there. She'd chosen to go in, she could have gone back if she had wanted to. She could fly back in to her own run in the morning if there was trouble.
I thought I'd bring forward my plans, and let them do a bit of free ranging together tomorrow.
,,,,
I woke up at 5ish. There wasn't a cacophony of complaints. I checked the camera, and I could see that all 7 birds were milling around. I checked the recordings and saw that there had been several scuffles that morning, none of them serious, and all of them were 1 to 1.
I went outside and opened the dividing door, in case things escalated. I watched them for a few minutes and I could see that the 2 araucana (numbers 4 and 5 in the Establishment) were being dominated by Hazel; Ophelia (number 6) was trying to assert dominance, she's been ready to move up the pecking order since Elizabeth, who kept her in her place, died . Astrid (Number 2 or 3) was "attacking" Hazel, but only in the expected way, nothing too horrible. Bott, who is number 1 or 2, wasn't bothered at all, top chooks rarely have to do anything much.
I'm wondering if she and Hazel had establised things yesterday?
It's likely to be the calm before the storm, and Hazel hasn't tried to join them in the coop at night yet, but it's going OK.
For now, we'll let things carry on and see how it goes.
