Chickens do not follow plans

Just a bit of generalized grumping here, because the chickens are not co-operating with my carefully made plans.  Seriously, the chickens do not give a single flying leap about what ideas and plans I might make.

Right now, the biggest rebels are the hens.  They are acting like middle school girls with their little cliques, and Little Girl is the outcast.  I tried putting her in with the layers, Goldie and the three sex link pullets from the October batch, but after the third morning of poor Little Girl with her beak in the corner of the tractor, I gave up and brought her out of there.  She is now in the banty house with the two Eileens ... who were supposed to be in the broody tractor with the Wheaties.  The Wheaties - especially the aptly-named Bossy - will not give either Eileen enough peace to even lay an egg in the new cubby-holed nesting box.  We gave Bossy a 60 hour time out, and she still returned to the broody tractor as the snippy and peckish boss hen, even bossing the cockerel Rock Star around.  Rock Star was supposed to have been a pullet - he fooled both Maria and me on that one.  He is not confident enough to put either Wheatie in her place, so he has a much smaller harem of hens now.

Little Girl got along fine in Tiny's tractor, even after I took out Beetle and Blackie and put in the Flashy Girls ... but I cannot tell her eggs from the Flashy Girls' eggs so Little Girl had to move.  She couldn't go in with Feyd, Beetle, Blackie, and the Big Butt Girls either, since her eggs are indistinguishable from her sisters' eggs.  Spikey and the Broilers' tractor is at capacity with the five red broiler pullets, and besides that the pullets have their own clique and squabble enough as it is.

Most of the Ideal Poultry Gold-Laced Wyandotte cockerels that I caponized this spring are slips.  Even Cappy and Puffy are definitely slips, and Cappy is a lot more irritable with his younger cockerels now that his hormones have been restored.  So far, it looks like Uno and Rumpy are my only capons, and Rumpy looks iffy some days.  Ah well, Luanne gave me a good twenty cockerels to practice on, and the learning curve is pretty steep for caponizing.

So, I need more room because fussy chickens do not want to get along peaceably in the groups I'd like them to be in.  Bah.  I guess we'll be expanding into the back acre sooner than we anticipated.

OK, that should conclude this week's grumping.  Here are a couple pics of Azar and the Layers, Goldie, Darkie, Penny, and Bright Eyes.  Well, it's actually just Azar and a couple of the layers ... they wouldn't stay inside the picture frame.

Penny, Goldie, and Azar

Bright Eyes, Azar and Goldie

Just in case the overall tone doesn't come through properly ... this is wry humor on my part.  Everyone knows the chickens won't even hold still for decent photographs, so how could I imagine they'd like my ideas for roommates?