ChickyBaby75
Chirping
- Jun 3, 2020
- 31
- 37
- 67
Hello Everyone!
I know there are a ton of "bullying" threads, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, so, I'm hoping that you experts can help me! I hope you all can follow this......It's a bit all over.
I have 4 golden sexlink girls. They were clutchmates and have all gotten together famously, with no real OBVIOUS pecking order. Until recently, that is. Two months ago, one of our girls ended up with vent gleet. We found this out fairly early because the other three suddenly started bullying her. Holding her down and pecking her until she was bloodied. (Two of the chickens were initiating this and the third just went along.)We brought the bullied girl in the house and spent a month nursing her back to health. Once recovered, we put her back with the flock hoping she would be fine. Not so much. They continued with the bullying.
We decided to take the two bullies and put them each in their own time-out cages. Kept them in there for two weeks and left the non-aggressive chicken with the bullied chicken (hoping they would rebond and then we'd have two-against-one bully at a time).
Today, we took the least aggressive bully out. First thing she did was go for the previously bullied girl. We even tried holding down the bully in front of the other two after her aggression, but, that didn't seem to make a difference. Her attack wasn't as intense as before, but, now the bullied chicken is terrified of the aggressive one and runs away. The calmer chicken and the first bully are now hanging together and the bullied chicken is cowering in the coop.
We don't want to even try taking the more aggressive bully out. And, we're not sure what to do, now. It's not right that this poor girl is being bullied like this when she is fine now.
Can anyone suggest anything to try?
Also, I read the thread on putting the victim in a safety cage during the day, but, I don't believe this will work because when we originally separated her to prepare the house for triage, the three would sit at the cage and peck at her through the bars...
I know there are a ton of "bullying" threads, but I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for, so, I'm hoping that you experts can help me! I hope you all can follow this......It's a bit all over.
I have 4 golden sexlink girls. They were clutchmates and have all gotten together famously, with no real OBVIOUS pecking order. Until recently, that is. Two months ago, one of our girls ended up with vent gleet. We found this out fairly early because the other three suddenly started bullying her. Holding her down and pecking her until she was bloodied. (Two of the chickens were initiating this and the third just went along.)We brought the bullied girl in the house and spent a month nursing her back to health. Once recovered, we put her back with the flock hoping she would be fine. Not so much. They continued with the bullying.
We decided to take the two bullies and put them each in their own time-out cages. Kept them in there for two weeks and left the non-aggressive chicken with the bullied chicken (hoping they would rebond and then we'd have two-against-one bully at a time).
Today, we took the least aggressive bully out. First thing she did was go for the previously bullied girl. We even tried holding down the bully in front of the other two after her aggression, but, that didn't seem to make a difference. Her attack wasn't as intense as before, but, now the bullied chicken is terrified of the aggressive one and runs away. The calmer chicken and the first bully are now hanging together and the bullied chicken is cowering in the coop.
We don't want to even try taking the more aggressive bully out. And, we're not sure what to do, now. It's not right that this poor girl is being bullied like this when she is fine now.
Can anyone suggest anything to try?
Also, I read the thread on putting the victim in a safety cage during the day, but, I don't believe this will work because when we originally separated her to prepare the house for triage, the three would sit at the cage and peck at her through the bars...
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