Since I began raising backyard chickens, there have been some ugly aspects that I hadn’t fully grasped beforehand. The first being the awful and soul shaking dispatching of the rooster. I won’t go into that too much because it still fills my heart with a great heaviness to think about. I know that it’s a integral part of animal husbandry, but taking a life is not something I was put upon this earth to do. Still, it had to be done and I couldn’t allow someone else to do it on my behalf just because it made me soul sick. I owed that much to that evil bastard of a rooster.
The second ugly aspect that I’m dealing with currently is the terribly savage way in which the chickens establish the pecking order. The major shit-storm basically all falls upon our young heroine, Piper. She is the cutest and sweetest chicken I’ve ever seen. She follows me around the yard like I was her momma and adores my dog Sasha. She is meek, asks for little and takes nothing.
Except, of course, for the continuous daily beatings from the other hens. These big brutes to be exact. Continue reading “Piper the Silkie’s Persecution: The Sad Story of the Pecking Order”