- Mar 2, 2009
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I hatched out 7 adorable bantam naked neck chicks (3 girls and 4 boys) May 8-9.
These little chicks were such cutie pies when they hatched out... but in just a few weeks some of them started becoming aggressive. In the first few weeks I noticed a couple of them had peck marks on them (didn't break the skin)... then a week or so later one of boys had a large bleeding wound on his head. Of course, I separated this boy and he has healed up nicely. I had them in separate quarters for about a week... during this time the rest of the chicks seemed to settle back down and I haven't had another bloody fight issue.
So today I tried to re-introduce separated boy, "Solo", to his hatch mates and this caused an immediate fight - within seconds all 4 boys were fighting each other... the girls all ran away from the fighting. I pulled "Solo" out as quickly as I could and put him back in his separate quarters... he had peck marks on his neck and was bleeding (just a tiny amount) from one of them. I checked the rest of the boys and none of them had any bleeding injuries and they were no longer fighting.
This is the first time I've ever had chicks fight... and I don't mean playful sparring... these guys are seriously fighting and drawing blood.
I am pretty certain that it's not an issue of space / boredom - they have a large shaded coop / pen outside and I rotate their feeders / waterers / dust bath pans / roosting branches / etc.
Also, these boys are different from chicks I've raised in the past as they were pretty easy to sex very early on - very early reddening of combs, wattles - the boys even started practice crowing at 6 (SIX!) weeks!
Has anyone else had anything like this happen? I would love to hear what others have to say... any advice / insight would be most appreciated.
my 3 girls
my 4 boys (second from the left is "Solo")
These little chicks were such cutie pies when they hatched out... but in just a few weeks some of them started becoming aggressive. In the first few weeks I noticed a couple of them had peck marks on them (didn't break the skin)... then a week or so later one of boys had a large bleeding wound on his head. Of course, I separated this boy and he has healed up nicely. I had them in separate quarters for about a week... during this time the rest of the chicks seemed to settle back down and I haven't had another bloody fight issue.
So today I tried to re-introduce separated boy, "Solo", to his hatch mates and this caused an immediate fight - within seconds all 4 boys were fighting each other... the girls all ran away from the fighting. I pulled "Solo" out as quickly as I could and put him back in his separate quarters... he had peck marks on his neck and was bleeding (just a tiny amount) from one of them. I checked the rest of the boys and none of them had any bleeding injuries and they were no longer fighting.
This is the first time I've ever had chicks fight... and I don't mean playful sparring... these guys are seriously fighting and drawing blood.
I am pretty certain that it's not an issue of space / boredom - they have a large shaded coop / pen outside and I rotate their feeders / waterers / dust bath pans / roosting branches / etc.
Also, these boys are different from chicks I've raised in the past as they were pretty easy to sex very early on - very early reddening of combs, wattles - the boys even started practice crowing at 6 (SIX!) weeks!
Has anyone else had anything like this happen? I would love to hear what others have to say... any advice / insight would be most appreciated.
my 3 girls
my 4 boys (second from the left is "Solo")