balding hens thanks to macho roo - are the combs next??

[technodoll]

Oh, I feel like SUCH a bad and cruel mama

My sexlink girls were content living with their two silkie roos, who never hurt them.

However I want to hatch sexlink x EE roo eggs to get olive eggers so I put my new, big EE roo in with the girls (after housing the silkie roos in a separate place of course). I have to wait 3 weeks before collecting eggs I've been told, to be sure to get the crosses I want.

Well. It's been 5 days now and my girls are all BALD from incessant, rigorous mating!

Seriously the roo has plucked ALL the feathers off their heads around their combs and above their eyes, one of my smaller hens looks like a refugee camp victim and had blood on her ripped up back - I felt soooo bad! I put her in with the youngsters for protection, forget that. The only hen that has no feather damage is the EE hen that came with the EE roo, he mounts her (I've seen it) but she's not lost any feathers.

If the roo has no more head feathers to hang onto when he mounts the hens, will he latch on to their combs next?

I do NOT want ripped, bloody combs and injured hens just for the eggs, this is ridiculous!

Please help with any advice!!

 

[patandchickens]

If they are narrowish birds and he is, as you say, "BIG"

, then that may be the problem as much as anything. I find that my big sussex roo has a lot of trouble staying atop the (smallish) campine and campineX in his pen, and thus causes rapid baldness as he grabs their head feathers to try to stay aboard... whereas he does not have this problem much with the larger sussex hens.

But despite having those two nearly-always-bald hens, he has never caused *any* damage to their combs. I think either he has better sense than to even try that, or if he ever DID try grabbing one's comb the whole mating exercise would have halted so suddenly and squawkingly right then and there that he never tried it again

So I would not necessarily worry about their combs.

However, you don't need the EE roo in there right now, you know! You just need to wait 2-3 wks after removing the silkie roos (the hens can be alone, with no menfolk in the pen), and THEN chuck him in there for a couple days and call it good. YOu may not get quite as high %fertile eggs from just a couple days' exposure as from continuing exposure over the whole week or 10 days that you're collecting eggs, but it shouldn't be THAT bad and might be less stressful for the hens.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[Southernbelle]

Quote:
I agree with Pat, it only takes a few days for a hen to start laying fertile eggs after she's been with a roo, but it does take a few weeks to make sure the Silkie's sperm is no longer viable.

 

[technodoll]

I feel like SUCH an idiot... why didn't I think of that?

OK mr Solaris is going into solitary confinement until I need him to mate his girls in two weeks - whew!

THANK YOU for the flashlight!!!

 

[hrtgtrkys&chicks]

I too have a problem with balding hens. My Buckeye roos are horney little guys and several of my hens have no feathers on their heads. One even has a bloody comb. I was going to put some bacitracin ointment on it. Is that OK?