In a chicken coop, location is everything. Our coop has three roosts that define the neighborhoods like railroad tracks. The front roost, where Roy sleeps, is high-priced real estate indeed. Admission is by invitation only, which admit just three lucky hens a night. The other six birds sleep on the back roost, perhaps a little close to the wall and consequently streaked white with chicken poop. The chickens don't seem to mind. It's comfortable there and safe, though unexceptional -- a sort of avian suburb, you might say, with hens warehoused shoulder to shoulder in a row along the branch. Between those two perches and with one end right against the glass door, hangs the dreaded lower roost. The low roost is where a young hen was pulled from the house and killed last spring, while I was installing my automatic chicken door. An animal bent back the temporary wire barrier I had tacked up and pulled the little chicken partially through the hole, just far enough to bite off her head and leave the rest stuck there for the petsitter to find. Even now that the chicken door is up and working, birds who sleep on the low roost must occasionally come eye to eye with a raccoon peering inside. It's the kind of place a young girl dreams of leaving.
And leave they do, because in our coop the birds rotate. Roy sees to that. He moves the girls from neighborhood to neighborhood by issuing exclusive invitations to the high roost.
I should tell you that although Roy shares his roost with three hens each night, there are only two invitations because Roy has had a special girlfriend since he was a little yellow chick, we call her the Number One hen, and in addition to other perqs of high status, she always sleeps on his left. Roy sleeps in the center of his roost, and Number One sleeps on his left. Dorothy, our eldest, sleeps two places down on his other side, and a guest bird sleeps between. It's the guest who rotates. I don't know the rules, but I do know that Roy enforces them. I have seen him peck and crowd an interloper until she falls off the roost or moves to the back, so that someone else, the right bird, the invited guest, can fill the slot. Four birds, no more, no less, sleep on Roy's roost.
For a long while this winter, the guest bird was Arabella, with Ginger and Beulah taking turns from time to time, too, all mature hens. Young girls start out on the lower roost, and eventually graduate to the back one. All of ours have moved up -- nobody has used the lower roost since the incident -- but they still don't come uptown. Their day will come, but for now they mature in suburban safety.
The odd thing is that Roy doesn't seem to like Arabella much, or Ginger either, for that matter, but he lets them sleep next to him. Maybe the reason has something to do with fence mending or deference to age. Or maybe the hens draw straws or have another way of awarding time. For having lived with chickens for so many millennia, humans know little about their social systems. Except, of course, that they exist.
And leave they do, because in our coop the birds rotate. Roy sees to that. He moves the girls from neighborhood to neighborhood by issuing exclusive invitations to the high roost.
I should tell you that although Roy shares his roost with three hens each night, there are only two invitations because Roy has had a special girlfriend since he was a little yellow chick, we call her the Number One hen, and in addition to other perqs of high status, she always sleeps on his left. Roy sleeps in the center of his roost, and Number One sleeps on his left. Dorothy, our eldest, sleeps two places down on his other side, and a guest bird sleeps between. It's the guest who rotates. I don't know the rules, but I do know that Roy enforces them. I have seen him peck and crowd an interloper until she falls off the roost or moves to the back, so that someone else, the right bird, the invited guest, can fill the slot. Four birds, no more, no less, sleep on Roy's roost.
Roy sleeps in the middle of the front roost and Number One sleeps beside him.
For a long while this winter, the guest bird was Arabella, with Ginger and Beulah taking turns from time to time, too, all mature hens. Young girls start out on the lower roost, and eventually graduate to the back one. All of ours have moved up -- nobody has used the lower roost since the incident -- but they still don't come uptown. Their day will come, but for now they mature in suburban safety.
The odd thing is that Roy doesn't seem to like Arabella much, or Ginger either, for that matter, but he lets them sleep next to him. Maybe the reason has something to do with fence mending or deference to age. Or maybe the hens draw straws or have another way of awarding time. For having lived with chickens for so many millennia, humans know little about their social systems. Except, of course, that they exist.
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