Queen Maeve is Dead

Queen Maeve is Dead – 12/31/22

It seems appropriate to write something in my blog for the end of the year, 2022, and what’s on my mind is my chickens. This is because last night Queen Maeve died. She was a Rhode Island Red and was almost 8 years old (about average for a chicken, I think). What made Queen Maeve interesting and unique for me was that she was a transgender chicken (sort of). Back when Queen Maeve arrived as a chick with 9 other chickens in 2015 she had a brother, Theodore, who was a very dominant rooster. The only male in that group, he grew very large (he was a Plymouth Rock). He was very dominant, providing a clear pecking order, but he began to over-mate, which seems to be a thing. The symptom of this was that he was gradually tearing all the feathers from the backs of the chickens. I assume that in the wild, or in a free range situation this would be less of a problem as the hens could escape, but in the confines of my coop some hens were really starting to suffer. I tried tar on their backs and a special goop I obtained from the UK, but nothing deterred him, so he finally had to go. 

Now it gets interesting, because in the absence of a strong rooster the pecking order was left in shambles. There was a void at the top and evidently it is common for one of the hens to step up and fill it. Queen Maeve stepped up. I can’t remember what I called her before, but once she stepped into leadership I named her after the mythical queen in Ireland who has a cairn tomb on Knocknarea mountain in Sligo, Ireland. I climbed up to it once and read about this legendary queen of Connaught and it seemed to fit this red feathered queenly bird.

As she stepped to the front of the pecking order Queen Maeve began to change. She grew a comb like a rooster, quit laying eggs and regularly mounted the other hens. She developed the full chest of a rooster, but not the impressive tail feathers. I never checked for a penis, but none of the eggs were ever fertilized, so we figured the transition was never complete. Therefore, though we called her our “transgender chicken”, I don’t really know how accurate that designation is. 

But Queen Maeve, for the next seven years of her life, did behave like a queen. No one messed with her and her feathers were always perfect. She never laid another egg, but she ate first, if she cared to, got first choice on the roost for the night and dominated each new generation of chickens who moved into her realm. There was some feather damage to the lowest chickens in the pecking order from Queen Maeve mounting them, but nothing as serious as had been done by Theodore, so I let it be. By then I was done with messing with the pecking order, having learned how that important that is in flocks of chickens. The years with her at the top have been quite peaceful. Everyone knew their place and all was peaceful. I am sorry Queen Maeve is gone, as I grew quite attached to her. But I am also sorry because now there is void at the top of the pecking order and I’m wondering what will happen. Who will step up or will they establish a consensus based cooperative?

Speaking of the pecking order leads me to my other piece of chicken news. With the death of Queen Maeve the only remaining chicken from the original 10 is Alexandra. She was named in honor of the wife of the Russian Czar Nicolas who was the mother of the son with hemophilia. I named her that because she was one of two Easter Egg Araucanas in that original group, one of who was large and impressive so I named her Victoria, but the other was sickly and small so I named her after Victoria’s less successful granddaughter, Alexandra. My Alexandra was always the bottom of pecking order. She was scrawny and unhealthy looking most of her life. She was the one whose back was the most torn up by the rooster, Theodore, and she continued to suffer under Queen Maeve. She hasn’t been much of an egg layer either. She routinely laid eggs with inadequate shells in her early years. Each year, I fully expected her to die. But now she has outlived them all, and it makes me wonder about pecking orders.

Is it possible that being at the bottom of the pecking order is actually an advantage. Maybe there is less stress because the hen knows exactly who they are and where they belong. They aren’t competing for power or dominance because it’s clear there’s no hope. They eat last, but they do eat. They get beat on, but they never doubt their place. Anxiety is a big part of a chicken’s life, after all, and perhaps the hens that suffer the least are the least anxious, precisely because they are at the bottom. A brief google search of hens at the bottom reveals that they are not to be pitied, despite getting beat up and being the last to eat and last to pick a place to roost. Google says they tend to be laid back in personality because they aren’t trying to dominate. And though they may be last to eat or perch, in a well ordered flock my sources claim that they will nonetheless eat and will have a safe place to perch. So my theory sort of works: less anxiety, a clear role in the flock (the bottom), and all they need to survive. I imagine a chicken expert could tell me more, but what I do have is evidence in my coop, as Alexandra lives on, her feathers now beautiful and seemingly very healthy this morning, having outlived all chickens of her age that arrived together that first year. The last shall be first, perhaps, when it comes to chickens.