A complicated pecking order

I thought that I would have another attempt to explain my flocks current complicated pecking order. Below is a diagram to try to illustrate the relationship between the girls. The arrows show which girls are above or below other girls.

The top of the pecking order is easy with Topaz as top girl and all the other girls below her and Honey in second place with the rest of the girls below her.

The pecking order used to be a simple ladder with Topaz top, Honey second, Toffee third, Emerald fourth and Peaches and Barley joint bottom. It is the new girls arrival into the flock that mixed it up.

Peaches and Barley had what I call bottom girl syndrome. They were determined that the new girls were not going to move into a position above them. They easily showed Speckles that she was bottom but spent much more time chasing Butterscotch to make sure she got the message that she was below them.

Honey didn’t bother Speckles at all. She could sense the threat was from Butterscotch and chased her and pulled feathers from her back in the early days to make sure she got the message that her place was below her.

Topaz didn’t have to do much more than give a look, chase or a casual peck as she knew there was no threat to her position.

However Butterscotch set about rising above the middle girls. She chases Toffee and Emerald and they don’t contest her. So although Butterscotch is below the previous bottom girls, Peaches and Barley, she is above Toffee, Emerald and Speckles.

The really odd thing is that Speckles who appeared to be bottom girl started chasing Toffee and Toffee runs from her. Emerald chases Speckles to keep her below her but Toffee backs down and is now below Speckles.

On the positive side at least the bottom girl has one girl below her so is not completely bottom. I think Toffee and Emerald took their place above Peaches and Barley because they were only babies when they joined the flock and as they grew up they never contested their place in the order.

Butterscotch has a stronger personality and was able assert herself over the middle girls. Emerald has also always accepted her place below Toffee but Speckles must have been able to sense the timidness in Toffee and was able to make her move.

They reinforce the order by a swift peck or a bit of chasing and the order has settled into it’s current pattern. No doubt if we had new girls all would change again.

I find the pecking order so interesting and it is so important to the girls.