This land is my land, that land is your land

The ducks are a flock divided, of late. We have the Mommas and the Papas (Rosie, Fern, Gwen and Gemma) and the Littles (Zaida, Olive, Harley and Abigail.) The Mommas and the Papas are so named because they are the parents of the Littles, who are named for the fact that they were originally much smaller. Gracie and Minna are a sort of flock of their own, my two mobility challenged girls who are kept separate from the rest of the flock so as not to be chased or harassed in any way.

But how did the rest of the flock become divided? Basically, it can all be boiled down to one thing: hormones. Now that the Littles are almost a year old they have become ruled by their hormones, as many teenagers are. Gemma, and to a lesser extent, Gwen, have become the object of Little boys affection so the Mommas tend to spend their time with the Papas, who are much less hormonal, being a few years older than the Littles. The Papas, for their part, tend to take excellent care of the Mommas and will chase off the Little boys whenever they get too close for comfort. 

The morning routine of late looks something like this: I fill the food and water bowls and open the gates to the yard and the duck run before letting the ducks out of the coop. Once the coop door is open the ducks come stampeding out of the coop and the Mommas and Papas try to grab a bite to eat before the Little boys lose interest in the food and try to go after one of the Mommas. Once the Little boys turn their attention to the Mommas the older ducks flee the run en masse for the yard. If they can make it to the left side of the yard, where the blueberry bushes are, they seem to cross an invisible line that demarks the territory of the Mommas and the Papas. Should the Little boys cross into this half of the yard in pursuit of the girls, they are immediately chased out by Rosie and Fern. 

So for the most part, the Mommas and the Papas get the left side of the yard. The Littles have claimed the dog run as their territory, and to a lesser extent the right side of the yard. The neutral ground is the patio on the right side of the yard where two of the pools are located. There the ducks will congregate around the pools in a relative truce, so long as the girls are left alone. As long as the ducks maintain their separate territories the flock/s exist in a tenuous peace. Occasionally I will see one of the Littles make an incursion into the left side of the yard only to be chased out by Rosie or Fern. (They usually work as a pair because two Papas outnumber three Littles, but should Rosie or Fern work alone, they will be chased back into the left side of the yard by two or three Littles.) The dynamics among the ducks are complex and varied and I have yet to entirely figure it out but I hold out hope that as the hormones settle down the group may meld into one peaceful flock once again. Fingers crossed, everyone.

Gemma, Rosie and Fern - three quarters of the Momma and the Papas group

Harley, Abigail, and Olive - the hormonal Little boys

Oops, we did it again

Well, we did it again. We rolled the dice on a new batch of chicks and we ended up with three little hens... and a rooster. Oy. This one is a barred rock rooster named Lilly. Had he been a she it would have worked out well because then we would have Lucy and Lilly, two barred rock hens. As it stands, Lilly is definitely not a hen - which I began to suspect early on when he grew faster than the other three (Pearl - a black Australorp, and Sally and Savannah - speckled Sussex hens) and his legs were bigger as well. The tell tale pointed feathers and the doubt erasing crowing didn't show up until several weeks later. 

Savannah and Sally

Pearl, hanging out in the top of the Japanese maple tree

So now we have two roosters and two separate flocks: the "bigs" and the "littles." Gretchen rules the bigs, who reside in the bigger coop and spend half the day in their run, and Lilly is the leader of the littles, who sleep in the little coop and spend the whole day roaming freely simply because they are littler than the bigs and haven't integrated into the flock yet. I'm sure the neighbors are thrilled.* We will be making Lilly a crow collar soon, however, so hopefully the crowing will calm down a bit. Gretchen seems relatively resigned to his crow collar: he seems to crow less frequently than Lilly and when he does crow, the volume is somewhat reduced. I have often wondered if the diminished volume of his crow is a source of some embarrassment to him so he just decides to stay quiet most of the time. Lilly, currently without a crow collar, has no such inhibitions. He crows regularly and loudly throughout the morning. He seems to refrain from raising a ruckus as soon as the bigs are let out of their run to free range during the afternoon and evening. Lilly appears to recognize that Gretchen is indeed the supreme ruler of the backyard (even the dogs are scared of him) and is wise enough not to tangle with him or antagonize him in any way, including crowing, which would only serve to alert Gretchen to Lilly's location hidden away in the grape arbor any way. 

In thinking about it now, I realize that we seem to have bad luck with barred rocks. Aside from Lucy, every other barred rock chicken we have had here on the Unfarm has been a rooster. A few years ago, when we allowed Georgia to hatch a batch of eggs after she went broody, we ended up with several barred rock chicks (on account of the fact that Georgia was stealing the other hen's eggs and rolling them into her nest) and every one of them turned out to be roosters. And now Lilly. 

We can only hope that he will be a friendly rooster so that we are not forced to send him away. Dad tolerates Gretchen when Gretchen is confined in the run but will not venture into the backyard when Gretchen is roaming freely, as Dad is adamant that Gretchen will attack him if given the chance. I have always found him to be pretty nice to Mom and I but maybe he just doesn't like men. I don't know if our luck would hold out if we ended up with two "attack roosters."

* Note: Fear not, we actually talk to our neighbors fairly regularly and they don't really seem to mind the chickens. One neighbor actually suggested we get a rooster to accompany our hens, not realizing we already had one at the time.

Lilly, our barred rock rooster