Help - Bullying/isolation question!

Benshensct

In the Brooder
Jun 8, 2022
12
8
34
I'm in Connecticut and I have three hens, two of whom started their first molt in December. My one hen, Fran (jersey giant), is going through a particularly hard molt and a lot of her skin and pin feathers are exposed on her neck/chest and underside. This has led to the other two bullying her/attacking her comb/pulling out the new feathers and preventing her from access food and water. I tried a few different tactics (Blu-Kote, anti-peck lotion, peepers) but the two bullies continued being very rude to her. Really shocking actually, because she was best friends with Lucy (RIR).

After some trial and error, I finally settled on a solution that seems to be working well for everyone. I have the Fran isolated in part of the run but she can see and chat with the other two between the bars. Everyone has enrichment (toys, places to jump on, roosts), food, and water in their run areas. Fran's area is 6ft x 6ft and Doris and Lucy's area is 3ft x 12ft. They all hang out during supervised free range and there hasn't been any fighting, thankfully. At night I take Fran into my sunroom where she sleeps in a large dog crate while the other two sleep in the coop. I figured I would continue this setup until all of Fran's feathers have regrown and none of her skin is showing.

My question is -- should I be concerned about Fran getting lonely on her side of the run?

Here's a picture of the setup. I'm hoping that full reintegration won't be too bad once Fran's feathers are back, but any advice on that would be greatly appreciated too!

IMG_5955.jpg
 
We haven't dealt with much bullying in our chicken yard, but when they did bully each other, we found it best to just keep an eye on them. They wouldn't get lonely, but that's because we have 11 chickens and usually only 2 or 3 would be bullying everyone. Fran might get lonely because there's a smaller amount of chickens and she's the only one not in the flock.

Chickengaurd.us says, "If a chicken is by itself for a few weeks it will be fine, but after a while many chickens who are kept alone seem to get lonely and depressed. They become lethargic, or start pacing and manically pecking at random objects."
 
We haven't dealt with much bullying in our chicken yard, but when they did bully each other, we found it best to just keep an eye on them. They wouldn't get lonely, but that's because we have 11 chickens and usually only 2 or 3 would be bullying everyone. Fran might get lonely because there's a smaller amount of chickens and she's the only one not in the flock.

Chickengaurd.us says, "If a chicken is by itself for a few weeks it will be fine, but after a while many chickens who are kept alone seem to get lonely and depressed. They become lethargic, or start pacing and manically pecking at random objects."
Thank you for the response! That's really helpful to hear. I will keep an eye on her behavior and watch for signs of depression in the coming weeks. Hopefully most of her feathers will be in within that time period. I decided to do this setup because she was too afraid to eat/drink, even with multiple feeding stations!
 

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