best way to stop one from pecking the others

[das fisch]

So I have I believe one older hen who is pecking the chest feathers off of two other hens of her same age.
What is the best way to stop this from happening? I don't want to rid the flock of her as we just had to get rid of the cockerels.
Also with the cold weather we have, I'm thinking of segregating them and into the garage until they feather back up, or have even thought of a sweater type contraption to prevent injury from the cold/elements until the heal and feather back up.

 

[7L Farm]

Sounds like a great plan.

 

[das fisch]

i've segregated the two "victims" of the pecking, except for when they're out of the pen and have free range of the yard/woods/etc. figured then they have plenty of room to seperate and the pecker has enough distractions to keep her busy.
with lows predicted down into the teens and possibly lower i've set up a refuge for the two of them back in the garage where temps are slightly elevated compared to outside.
I guess i'll keep that up until the feather back out. for the meantime though if the temps get real low i'll rig up some kind of sweater to cover there bald spot as i don't want them to be completely declimatized from outside during the day.
we'll see what happens, and also keeping an eye on the other 10 to see if the pecking carries over to another in the flock. If so... well we'll deal with that then!

 

[papeine]

what would happen if you separated the dominate one for a while??

 

[das fisch]

so far my plan has backfired. there are two which were getting pecked and lost the feathers on their chest, well now that they have been segregated from the others they have been pecking each other and taking the feathers off of their necks too.
I'll have to seperate them into seperate crates now too it looks like. anything that can be applied to try to stop this. heard of vicks vaporub, but kind of searching for something a little more specific to the original problem

 

[Michigan Transplant]

I found one of my RIR hens with some of her feathers missing just in front of the tail area. Noticed this two days ago and so far she isn't missing any other feathers. Is this caused by another hen or the Rooster or both? Only have had the RIR since April. I have 24 females and one rooster. No problems with them until now. The rooster is afraid of me and runs whenever I get near him. My ears are sensitive and when he LOUDLY crows in the chicken house it hurts so I yell at him and have tried to grab him and pulled out a feather once. I got 20 eggs today so only 4 aren't laying. I am keeping a red heat lamp in their pen for warmth since it is in the single digets the last few nights. I have a heated waterer and feed them daily. Any help would be appreciated. THANKS.





25 Rhode Island Reds and 3 Silver Campines