Who should get pinless peepers?

[50-45-1]

Before you run out and get more hens, please taKe a tape measure and tell us exactly how much room your hens have.
Over crowding and boredom are in my opinion more than likely the leading causes of feather picking.
Good Animal husbandry is about making decisions, sometimes hard ones, for the health and welfare of your flock.
These are not your children, puppies or kittens...they are chickens..minature decendts of dinasaurs. They can literally turn canibal and eat each other if not managed correctly. Its a hard reality, and dealing with what needs to be done is not for everybody.
Your hens are suffering the consequences.
If your roosters spurs are tearing open the sides of your hens, trim his spurs.
Feather picking is sometimes not easy to stop once the habbit starts.
Peepers work sometimes, but ive seen posts from folks that report hens figuring out how to continue to feather pick while still wearing them.
I wish you and your chickens the best of luck!

 

[Fishychick]

As I said, I have about 43 ft2 per hen. I'm not getting more hens. That just adds more variables and more problems. I don't think they're overcrowded but I readily admit they are probably pretty bored. My chickens are velociraptors but also my "children." Not the sense that you mean but in the sense that I will take care of them as long as I am able and no matter what. They are my responsibility, and I love them most of the time. When Angel was trying to kill me, not so much but I understand it's in his DNA. My hens are not suffering from the roosters any longer; as I've said a few times, they are separated in different houses/runs.

Why didn't I do it sooner? I'm a 47-year-old hag who until the last few years when she had no choice had never built anything in her life. My late father did all the handyman work until dementia befelled him 7 years ago. I divided the chicken run and house all by myself. The lines may not be straight, and half the nails only made it half way in but it does the job. I had to teach myself to make gated doors with 2x4's and use a pneumonic stapler I bought last year to put up fencing. I'm using an electric drill and miter saw, all self taught and never touched until a few years ago. I have nobody who can help me and don't want to hire someone due to high cost, previous total incompetency, and the virus situation. I'm not stupid; I have a Masters degree in analytical chemistry; I've just never had to do the physical stuff before. I'm not strong.

I've had chickens 19 years, and this is the first time feather picking has been a problem. I always had at least one rooster with the hens, and I think he keeps the ladies in line towards each other. You should see how Dulcie and Ari try to desperately get to the roosters for protection but they are separated. They want to be together even though the boys were tearing them up. I'm keeping them apart, and for the first time in over a year, I can go in and get bowls and eggs without having to push Angel back with a shovel while he jump kicks me. Dinosaurs aren't easy to take care of!

 

[50-45-1]

You Go Girl!!!
Like you I had to learn how to take care of myself. My Father died of cancer in 1979, and left me a wonderful farm to live on and care for. He prepared me well however teaching me how to handle a hammer and pry bar, along with using a chainsaw, which is crucial as our home still heats with a wood furnace today.
I am now in my 60's with a husband who is in hospice. He has taken care of me completely for the last 20 years and soon I will once again be the captain of my own ship, and it's kind of scary.
One thing I dont tolerate however is nasty roosters. My Mom raised meat chickens most summers. In fall we would butcher 10 a day and put up roasters for winter. We also chopped up some and spent a week making pot pies, freezing them. How wonderful the memories of this time with Mom, learning how to butcher and clean a chicken, then how to cook. She also did rabbits. I had more trouble with them. The killing part I mean.
I have had many nasty roosters disrupt the peace of my barnyard or injure my hens, and the peace and enjoyment that returns after I have removed the trouble maker, (s) makes it worth it.
I hatch chicks each summer and half turn out to be roosters. I try to find homes for them but most get culled as I refuse to feed them all winter and it would be complete kahos to keep more than one.
I commend you on your independence and gumption, you will forge your own path through this delima. I know you will.
God Bless!

 

[Fishychick]

So, I will give an update. I put the peepers on the Billie and Perky, and they stopped pecking at Dulcinea and Ariel. They were growing new feathers. Then, two days ago, I noticed that Billie and Perky's noses were getting infected from the peepers, and Billie was acting weird, so I took them off. It was OK the rest of the day but by yesterday, Perky began pecking Ariel. Right now, Ariel's entire rear which is 100% bald is covered in blood. I watched Perky go over to her and basically eat her. I just had a fight with Perky and put the peepers back on her to save Ariel's life, maybe. So, with the peepers on the bully hens, the victims get better but the bullies end up with infections. With the peepers off, the bullied hens will die. Ariel is nearly 100% naked with only a few down feathers. It was freezing last night and tonight. She's covered in blood. So, nobody gave me any advice but now I can tell you this is a no win situation. It took all my strength and lots of money to separate the roosters from the hens, and it was probably the wrong this to do. The roosters would keep the hens from hurting each other. I can't make a fourth area for the chickens. I'm out of space, time, strength, and money. Now, somebody is going to die. I'm almost tempted to put the roosters back with the girls but they were slicing up Ariel and Dulcinea.

 

[50-45-1]

Chickens are the closest living descendants related to dinosauers. Not kittens or puppies, think T-Rex.
They can turn cannibal. This is why commercial egg farmers have the beaks clipped on there hens. Saves them this feather picking nightmare you are dealing with.
You clearly are not reaping much enjoyment from your chickens, and the trouble seemed to start with roosters, space and finally feather picking.
People laugh about chicken math and how funny it is to pick up more chicks at the feed store when they dont have room for them and THIS is sometimes the result or consequences of overcrowding and imbalance of hen/rooster ratio.
I recommend you advertise your chickens for rehoming now as you are clearly fed up.
Dont blame GOD for a situation you created by bad management.
Again, good luck and God bless!

 

[Mrs. K]

What does the inside of your run look like. I read the whole post and you did ask for some help with entertainment, as you said they had nothing to do but eat and fight.

So is the run, an wide open area, where as all the birds can see all of the other birds all of the time? If you add a lot of clutter, roosts, pallets, boxes on their sides, multiple feed stations positions so as a bird eating at one station cannot see birds at another station.

Wash off the peepers with peroxide or rubbing alcohol, and leave them on.

Mrs K

 

[Fishychick]

The roosters are doing great! They're no problem now. It's the hens. Everybody says to just have hens, and there are just hens now in their area. I've never had just hens together, and until now, I've never had feather picking in 20 years. I think roosters truly are crucial to the flock. If the two I had with the hens didn't try to kill me and rip up the hens, I would put them back. I didn't make the hens bully each other; they have everything they could want including no longer having to deal with roosters.

I don't "manage" my chickens. If "managing" means killing them, I'm never going to manage any animal. They are not things. They don't exist to bring me enjoyment. I let Perky hatch some babies last year. My late mother never let the hens have more than one baby at a time. I wanted to experience it; everybody else did. Yes, it was a mistake which I freely admit but the lives that were created all deserve to be here and to be alive. I almost never eat chicken eggs; my late mother liked to eat eggs. I give all the eggs away (nobody pays me one cent). I thought of the eggs as all being potential babies; how could I eat a baby; now they are infertile so that's not the case. I have five hens. Two are brooding nothing (I pull eggs twice a day; plus they should be infertile by now). Then, there's little miss Perky who is trying to murder Ariel and Dulcinea, the only two girls she managed to hatch last year! As far as she knows, they're her daughters (Billie is actually the biological mother). She does not get a Mother's Day card this year! They're not overcrowded. In fact, I think it's the lack of other birds around that makes Perky target Ariel because the boys are in other areas, and Daffy and Billie and sitting on nests. So, Perky thinks finding something to do means being bad. I hope she can tolerate those peepers because they're staying on.

Anyway, I'm back to defending myself and never actually getting any useable advice.

 

[Fishychick]

Perky is wearing a new set of peepers. The girls' run has two dog houses for nesting, a ladder, roosts, and a wood ramp I added a few weeks ago. The house has food, water, roosts. Dulcie and Ariel have no feathers and can't get up on the roosts to get away from Perky and Billie. Last year, they spent most of their time up on the roosts in the run when they were fully feathered pullets. I had to hand feed them. I thought it was just fear of the roosters but maybe it was Perky all along. She was never mother of the year.

 

[Fishychick]

What do you all think about Billie and Daffy? In order to break them from brooding, I'd have to remove all the nest boxes which means everybody dumps eggs on the ground for two weeks. That's the only way I've broken Daffy before, and then she went back to it a month later. I feel bad for her; she would have been a better mother than Perky. I haven't taken the nests away, thinking that with Billie and Daffy also going after Dulcie, and Ari, it would be even worse for them. So, leave them brooding their invisible eggs or break their brooding (so they can be healthier since they are eating almost nothing) and possibly stir a hornet's nest with the others?

Also, some people say their hens grow feathers back but mine never do outside of the yearly molt. So, three of my hens are mostly naked from when they were with the roosters over a month ago now with no feathers coming in. When they were with the roosters, they had dresses/saddles but the cloth on their backs actually caused almost permanent balding there moreso than where the roosters stepped on either side of the almost useless dresses. Years ago, I had two roosters and three hens in a much smaller run, and nobody had dresses, and nobody was naked so each batch is birds is really different.

I know, I'm a horrible person for not killing the roosters and bully Perky. My mother did tell me, "Nobody will ever love you, not because you're ugly on the outside, lots of ugly people get married, but because you're ugly on the inside." Nobody included her. She taught me that she was always right. I guess she was my Perky! Miss you mom on Mother's Day! I know you would have killed the eggs Perky was incubating last year like you did for Pondet years ago, and I wouldn't have 10 chickens. Being right doesn't mean being nice.

 

[Fishychick]

Well, not that anybody cares, but things are better this morning. Perky isn't attacking Ariel since she's got those dumb plastic glasses on again which will eventually harm her. Ariel's bloody areas are now black instead of red which means no new pecking. I'm putting Vetericyn spray on the wounds. That stuff is great; I recommend it. Daffy and Billie are broody so it's like they don't exist. I'll keep it like that so Ariel can heal because they are both bullies too.

Last night, during the mealworm feed, Georgia fell off his roost, and he got loose. I stayed calm and got him back inside. Since he's bullied when he comes off roost, he is no longer aggressive with me unless I actually dare to touch him. So, he's my buddy now. I hand feed him on roost. The other two sets of two roosters get along great with each other and don't fight at all. I just can't combine all five. So, I think I've done a good job finding a way to keep them all alive and as happy as possible (yes, Ariel is miserable but this is a new problem I'm working on). There is nobody who would adopt a rooster as a pet; they would all eat them. I think they are happy I chose life for them!