There’s a saying in the farm world,
“If you’re gonna have livestock, you’re gonna have deadstock.”
Morbid, perhaps, but just reality when you truly think about it. None of us make it out of here alive, and when animals fall under our care, it’s our duty to keep them happy and healthy until their final days.
So when life doesn’t go as planned and animals die unexpectedly, it feels pretty miserable.
Two weeks ago, with the help of two very brave and generous friends, I brought home a trailer of 375 18-week old pullets (young hens), These chickens were to start laying eggs almost immediately, and would have doubled the total size of my flock.
Loading pullets into the trailer at a pick-up site.
I always buy ready-to-lay pullets, rather than chicks, because it saves me an exponential amount of time, money, and space. These birds are raised by a hatchery in Pennsylvania that does a tremendous job caring for them for the first 4 months of their life.
There is a learning curve to everything in life, and buying pullets is no different. I learned with my first batch three years ago that the transition from living in mostly darkness in the hatchery to suddenly being exposed to sunlight, as well as the rigors of travel, are very stressful on hens and can cause them to peck each other. When they peck from stress, it is always on the same spot on each chicken’s back, near the base of her tail feathers. Chickens are highly drawn to the sight of blood, so if they peck hard and long enough and it breaks the skin, they will literally peck a chicken until it’s dead.
I’ve come to expect this by now, and do frequent coop checks within the first 3 days of arrival. After that, they’re usually in the clear. If there’s any sign of bleeding, I remove that hen immediately and keep her separated from the flock until she completely heals.
Well this year… I experienced cannibalism on a scale far grater than ever before, and worse than I ever could have possibly imagined. Within hours of arrival, zombie chickens were running everywhere. I had five infirmaries going to try to keep the pecked hens away from everyone else, but it eventually got beyond a point of even remotely keeping up with. I lost dozens of hens over the course of a week and a half.
It was unbearable. Quite possibly the longest two weeks of my life. The worst part was that no matter what I did, it just kept happening. Everyday for a week and a half I would make the rounds every 2-3 hours to look for chickens in peril. There was an incredible amount of dread that came with knowing that inevitably every time I did a wellness check, no matter how frequent, I would find chickens who had succumb to the ruthlessness of their coop-mates. I can’t image a much worse fate than being pecked to death.
Because I don’t believe there’s such thing at failing, there were definitely lessons that I took away from this ordeal.
There is a reason why some farms/hatcheries trim beaks. While some people may view it as cruel, I believe it is 100% justified and far more humane than dying from cannibalism. Out of the past 5 pullet orders I’ve gotten, only one batch had trimmed beaks. That was the only batch that I never had any issues with cannibalism.
This time around I let all of the new hens free-range in the pen with the existing flock when we unloaded them from the trailer. In the future (and as I have typically done in the past), I will put them all into a coop right away and lock them in there for at least the first 12 hours in order to establish where their living space is and to create a slightly darker environment for them upon arrival. This way they’ll also be kept separate from the existing flock for the first few days of acclimation.
This year I hadn’t yet gotten the chickens back out on green grass before the new hens arrived. Because they didn’t have much in their pen to scratch around in, I believe the pecking situation was more severe. Going forward, I’ll be sure to have the coops back out to pasture so as to give chickens old and new plenty of grass to scratch around in and occupy their minds.
I came to learn than many other producers who had gotten pullets from this bulk order also experienced a similar issue this year. What a relief that was! These hens were two weeks older than typical, and we believe that them being that much closer to egg-laying age caused them to be even more stressed. A lesson learned for all of us.
Thankfully, we seem to have “flattened the curve” of cannibalism and three days ago I celebrated the first day of zero deaths by cannibalism since the arrival of the new hens. Life goes on and I learn from each experience, but it has definitely been a traumatizing start to the production season. Just one of those times when farm life is not all sunshine, rainbows, and happy hens.
Because I’d never subject you to photos of cannabilized chickens, here’s sunshine, (no rainbows), and happy hens. Back out on pasture for the 2021 grazing season.