Autumn greetings from all the animals at Breezy Acres Farm! We are currently preparing for all things fall, loading up on hay bales, mucking pens, and trimming hooves. Soon it will be time to treat the animals with pumpkins again!

This last month, we lost one of our “original” hens, who was a black laced red Wyandotte named Zena. She and her sister Lady were the first two hens brought to the farm, after we found a rooster alongside our dirt road, with no owner in sight.

Roosty was wandering the dirt road for a few days before we picked him up and took him home. Well, after driving up and down the road with him, going door to door trying to find his owner. After homing Roosty for a while, we decided it was only fair to him to have the company of female chickens, and we received our first two hens from a friend.

We didn’t know that there was something called a “pecking order” about to occur as we introduced the hens to Roosty; we had never had chickens before. There is a hierarchy that occurs between hens and roosters, where one hen will dominate the others and will become the leader of the flock, like an alpha wolf to its pack.

When we put them together, Roosty tried to control the hens, and was being extremely aggressive toward Lady, which Zena did not take lightly. Zena ran over to Roosty, started to fight back, and won! He stopped fighting with the girls, let them be, and from then on out the three of them were very peaceful with each other.

This is when we came up with Zena’s name; she’s a warrior princess for standing up to the rooster for herself and her sister.

This taught us a very valuable lesson, and every time we introduce new chickens or roosters to each other now, we know to have them separated where they can see each other for a few days, and then gradually allow the new ones to enter the flock. This allows us to observe their reactions, and to lessen the chance of a brutal fight happening between the birds.