Hi I hope you can help.
2-3 months ago I bought a couple of Marran hens and a Marran cockeral to add to my flock of 5 black rock hens.
The usual bit of pecking amongst the girls and shock and screams when he jumped on them, but on the whole all seemed fine with him guarding against crows and offering them food.
He did favour the black rocks and in particular one with a dodgy leg who obviously can’t move quite so fast.
In the last 2 weeks I have had to have 2 of my black rocks put to sleep for septic egg perontitis and I have had soft shells (an early sign from one the two poor earlier ladies) over the last two days on a third. The one with the dodgy leg is also making a very strange stretching up of the neck and she seems to have a rather large off to the side chest.
I have them on Flubenet wormer incase of gapeworm (although no other are showing signs) and am putting down plenty of shells incase it is a digestion issue, but they have been free ranging a bit. Or maybe it is muscular as she is always slightly off centre with her bowing leg.
I have seperated the Marrans (2 hens and cockeral) and let them all out together for a couple to few hours wander during the day so that he is not jumping on them in a confined space. I have just brought in another 3 black rock pullets to bring numbers back up and am keeping him seperated whilst they settle in with the other older black rocks.
My concern is that he is too heavy for the black rocks as it seems a huge coincidence that all these problems have occurred since he arrived. Should I send him to a farm where he can take his pick from many and let the ladies be on their own (as they were for two years previous) or try and get a more suited black rock cockeral. I feel very guilty he and the marrans are away from the enclosure they used to be in in a much smaller environment and feel terrible that they have to take his advances on their own when enclosed with him.
I am so confused, I love him, but feel he is just crushing the black rock ladies into illness and I adore them.
Please advise, thank you so much
Jade