new hens

I've got new hens!  Four new-to-me deliveries, two reds and two leghorns (people often get rid of hens this time of year- most of my layers are handmedowns).  What a novelty, to have white eggs!  They got right on it too, one leghorn laying in the coop on her first morning.  She's the fast learner.  Came walking down the ramp on her first day.But I'm getting ahead of myself.We picked them up after dark, and I carried them home in a box on my lap, petting them through the cardboard flaps.I didn't have much of a choice, I put them into the coop with the others, and had to hope the rooster would handle welcoming committee duties, as he has before.  I pushed his usual concubines aside and tucked the new hens right in next to him, to bond.Well, Day One dawned, and I let down the ramp.  Leghorn One trotted down the ramp with the others, and joined them at the trough.I waited.I lifted the lid on the coop.  The remaining three were huddled there in panic, just until they all burst flapping out of the open lid and ran away squawking.  So I left.  That's no good.  That means they will not no where to return to at night, and they didn't.I tiptoed back later, and the new hens were all milling around the coop, eating.  And so was the rooster!  He was hanging out with the new girls!  Most of the old girlfriends had decamped to the house after breakfast like they always do.I like the way leghorns look, with their ultra-stiff erect tails.And their floppy combs, often flapped over one eye, like an ill-fitting beret.HW says they remind him of Beatniks, and if he creeps up real quiet, maybe he'll hear some chicken jazz, or a poetry slam going down.At night, as predicted, they hunkered down in the brush a few feet from the coop.  It took several days of nightly scooping for them to get the idea, one at a time, that they live in the coop.They're sweet little things. They're very tame.  They come right up to me, and let me touch them.  The rooster spends all his time with them now, staying with them as they ever so slowly expand their scope outward from the vicinity of the coop.The new girls don't know that the greenhouse is off-limits, and blithely trot in behind me.  Don't mind if I do!  Hm, good stuff in here.Then I get to shoo them out.One is very low on the chicken totem pole.  Cringe-ingly subservient, as pictured top-of-post.  She had a chance to make a new start, but missed it.  I should call her Violet, as in "shrinking".  She's always got her head low, ducking and genuflecting.They're getting the hang of having the world to roam in though:As these hens went tentatively trotting down the path after the others, I thought They're gonna fit right in!A couple nights later, I come home and go to feed them chicken supper, and there are no leghorns.  Oh no, did they get eaten because they're white?  All the other hens show up for dinner, but the leghorns.  I look all over.  As a last resort, I check inside the coop.  They've already gone to bed!  They are the early birds.  Early to bed, early to rise, first down the ramp in the morning, with an egg already laid.