pecked to death!

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Chickenshark

Chickenshark

In the Brooder
9 Years
Aug 20, 2010
86
2
43
Some Ocean
First of all I WILL NOT POST PHOTOS HERE. Okay last night we put out three 2 and 3 week old chicks out in our mini coop with some much older chicks and then this morning we found two them dead and bloody (one had it's throat pulled out
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). Those stupid (older) chicks! now I'm going to post angry and sad emoticons.
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I AM SO MAD!
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P.S. The older chicks pecked those two younger chicks to death. darn it!

Lesson learned: never ever put new (smaller) chickens with with your older (and bigger) chickens.
 
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Sorry that your chicks died.. A good tip for putting chicks together is to make sure they all are about the same size. That way they can defend themselves. Maybe that will help a little, Hannah.
 
Are you sure it was the other birds? Raccoons do stuff at night like grab through wire and chew parts off chickens. At 2 and 3 weeks of age they still need warmth to stay healthy. Good luck
 
How many chickens do you have and how big is your coop? Many people put waaay too many chickens into a coop that isn't big enough! The smaller/younger less aggressive chickens have to have room to get away from older/larger more aggressive chickens. If they don't have that extra room that is when problems like this occurs. Also cannibilism and feather picking. Also, 2 and 3 weeks is just too young to put with grown chickens! I didn't put mine out with my grown hens until they were about 5 weeks old and I sectioned off a portion of the coop with chicken wire and left them there for about 2 more weeks. By then they were old enough and fast enough to get away from the older girls when they got too aggressive. Mine free range, too so they have lots of room to run! I am sorry this happened, you just learned a hard lesson the hard way.
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Thanks for the advice.

P.S. who's Hannah?

Heh. Yep, this is why I always call internet people by the name I see them using. If it says Chickenshark there, that's the name. I notice others using real names and it's very confusing when you see SomeName up there and people are talking to "Fred" for instance.
 
Just thought I'd chime in since I'm Chickenshark's mom...
I really thought the chicks (who are at least 3 wks old) would be alright since they went into a coop with plenty of space and most of the other, older chicks are bantams (ie: they're the same size). I'm guessing though that maturity matters. Lesson definitely learned.
The curious thing though is that we put 3 younger chicks in but only found 2 bodies. The coop they were in is a smaller coop we have just for bantams or chicks depending on our needs at the time. It's from plywood rather than pallets, so there are no spaces to hide in. We have looked and looked (five of us) and none of us can find the 3rd chick. The only thing I can come up with as far as predator possibilities is perhaps something really small like a weasel or mink?? The chicks we found had their scalps gone - no other obvious damage to the bodies. Just all seems so odd that the 3rd chick is missing. Any thoughts? I'm also wondering, if the older chicks did do this, does this mean they're more likely to do it again? We've never had pecking issues with our flock before.
 
We've had chicks die during the introduction with larger birds. After that experience we waited until the chicks were MUCH OLDER and then slowly integrated them together. Good Luck! I've always found integration somewhat difficult and we'll be doing it again soon...
 
sounds like a predator to me I've never heard or seen a chicken scalp-pull the throat out of chicks they will at most have a hole and be beat to death not ripped apart this is definitely the work of a predator probably a mink, weasel maybe a large rat or even a raccoon
 
We did find chick #3 yesterday afternoon. It was wandering around outside of the min-coop with its entire butt missing feathers. I still can't figure out how it got out of that coop, but it does seem that it was being pecked at and managed to escape where the other two did not. I can't imagine a predator would remove all that fluff & feather and not bite it at all? There was no blood, but it sure has a bare butt. I washed it with betadine just to be on the safe side and it's in the house. Feel bad for the little thing. It's all alone now. Too big to go in with the day old chicks and obviously too little to be with the older chicks. I have it in its own little bin with a screen over it next to the larger brooder so at least it can hear the other chicks.
 

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