Atlas The Chicken Tender
Chirping
- Nov 9, 2023
- 16
- 101
- 66
As it says on the tin, but here are more details regarding the issue.
So I got 5 baby birds (now around 16 weeks old) from a fairly reputable breeder a few months ago to go along with my three other adult birds. Everything was relatively normal as far as flock integration goes. The babies were quarantined and though they spent some time in a large breed dog cage, they were frequently let out into a larger enclosure on the daily.
This baby bird, a cream legbar, was different from the others from the get-go. She was far more bold than the other babies, accepting treats from our hands within two days of coming home. Whether in the cage or in the larger enclosure, she didn't care about being with her flockmates. She still doesn't. The only interaction she really initiates with the other birds is pecking at their tails, which actually ended up killing one of our original babies. When this happened, we separated her from the other birds until they could get some feathers on their butts.
That was around a month ago. We let her out for the first time to see how she would interact with the other birds, and it was going so well at first! Unfortunately, that was very short lived, and she was right back to pecking at her flockmates' tails even with full feathering. My husband and I have separated her again until we figure out how to get this behavior to stop. We've tried Peck-no-more goo, we've tried giving her more space, not much has really worked. Our next step is changing her feed, but if that doesn't work, what else can we try? We really don't want to have to kill her.
So I got 5 baby birds (now around 16 weeks old) from a fairly reputable breeder a few months ago to go along with my three other adult birds. Everything was relatively normal as far as flock integration goes. The babies were quarantined and though they spent some time in a large breed dog cage, they were frequently let out into a larger enclosure on the daily.
This baby bird, a cream legbar, was different from the others from the get-go. She was far more bold than the other babies, accepting treats from our hands within two days of coming home. Whether in the cage or in the larger enclosure, she didn't care about being with her flockmates. She still doesn't. The only interaction she really initiates with the other birds is pecking at their tails, which actually ended up killing one of our original babies. When this happened, we separated her from the other birds until they could get some feathers on their butts.
That was around a month ago. We let her out for the first time to see how she would interact with the other birds, and it was going so well at first! Unfortunately, that was very short lived, and she was right back to pecking at her flockmates' tails even with full feathering. My husband and I have separated her again until we figure out how to get this behavior to stop. We've tried Peck-no-more goo, we've tried giving her more space, not much has really worked. Our next step is changing her feed, but if that doesn't work, what else can we try? We really don't want to have to kill her.
