The wonderful adventures of Bitchy and Scratchy

I'm going to tell you about Bitchy and Scratchy. But mostly about Scratchy. Scratchy is a hen. A chicken. "She's made of chicken". She lays eggs, eats scraps, and doesn't do much more.

In the last iteration of "having chickens at home", my mom went and bought several chicks. Some of them turned out to be male, others female. Under different circumstances, and for different reasons, most of them have passed to a better, perhaps, life. Right now, there are two hens: Bitchy and Scratchy. they live in a pen with Pavo. (Pavo is a turkey. Someone gifted him to my mom, because somehow she had ended with a female turkey, and... well, we have a turkey now too)

Scratchy got her name because she appeared with her back de-feathered and scratched skin. And Bitchy got her name because she would be a bitch and peck at Scratchy's wounds. Not cool, Bitchy!

When we saw Scratchy's back, and Bitchy pecking at her when she walked by, we thought "well, that bitch is bullying Scratchy", and decided we had to do something. At first we thought Scratchy got scratched by walking under a metallic part of their pen, possibly escaping Bitchy's bullying attempts, so we moved it. For a while, Scratchy's back got better. Scabs fell, no more redness/blood. We thought that was it.

But, no. some time later, we notice Scratchy has a red back again. This time, I dragged an old homemade cage into their pen, and isolated Scratchy so she had some time to heal. We also applied some iodine on her back, for good measure.

At this point, most people's reaction could very well be "so, why don't you eat this chicken and buy another one?", which is, I guess, fair. I suspect that if we tried bringing her to the vet to inspect, that would be their reaction as well. Instead, we're trying to heal her. Dunno, we roll like that.

It has to be said that Scratchy does not like being in the cage. That's fair, I can respect that. But for her own good, we thought that's the best. It's, it has to be said, remarkable how quick this hen's back heals. After a couple days, her back is healed and scab-and-wound-free, so we release her from the cage. And a couple days later, we found her back all scratched again. We repeat this for a couple cycles. Until we decide: you know what, maybe we should cage Bitchy. A couple days behind bars for bullying while Scratchy recovers. So we do that.

It was around then, in the middle of this back and forth, when we came up with the names Bitchy and Scratchy, more or less. God dammit, Bitchy, stop bullying Scratchy, you damn gangly bitch! (It's Always Sunny in our Chicken Pen)

And then, we realize that Scratchy's back is not getting better. Oh, shit. Is it Pavo? is Pavo attacking this particular chicken?

So, once again, we cage Scratchy to let her back heal. Some days later, when her back is recovered, I let her out again, with the plan of caging her after a bit of exercise. For her own good and such. Pretty much immediately after releasing her, she goes toward Pavo and... very willingly and consensually, she bows down a bit and lets Pavo mount her.

"Oh my", writes my wife on the phone chat when I tell her what's causing Scratchy's ailments. She's a horny floozy, we agree. "Would you look at that", we say to one another.

So, yeah. Scratchy is loving that turkey D. So much so, that she's getting her back all scratched, like a stereotypical cartoon character. And not because Pavo is a reckless bully forcing himself on Scratchy, quite the opposite. But, alas, Pavo is several times bigger and heavier than tiny Scratchy, so some damage might be inevitable...

We are at the point now where we are considering:

* Knitting Scratchy a sturdy vest to protect her back
* Is chainmail for chickens a thing?
* Searching on the internet whether a turkey-chicken hybrid is a possibility
* Separating Pavo from the chickens, releasing him to the geese area

Searching online for these things is surfacing quite en amount of surprising information, like:

* You can buy vests for chickens directly on Amazon (not gonna), there are knitting patterns available too (we might. For the lolz at the very least).
* There is such a thing as chainmail for chicken. Singular/uncountable. It's a thingy for cooking it. Not useful here.
* My wife informs me that, apparently, turkeys can fertilize chicken eggs, but viable embrios are very very very rare and there's no way the egg will hatch. I searched as I write this,  and I'm not sure that every (contradicting) result I'm seeing is not AI slop hallucination.
* Did I tell you about the geese? maybe some other day


In the meantime, Scratchy has been slowly developing some trust toward me, to the point that the other day she was eating a raspberry from my hand, and she's no longer running away terrified when she sees me entering the pen. So there's that, I'm making friends among our poultry. And, ain't that the dream?

Tags: eggs, geese, chickens, poultry, animals, turkey