Bloody comb....being pecked?

SassyKat6181

Songster
9 Years
Aug 30, 2010
972
15
133
Western Mass
I am still new to this and my hens have been laying for a few weeks. Today when I went down to collect eggs, the bottom of the pecking order had quite a bit of blood on her comb. There are 3 double wide nest boxes, but they all use the same one. They are never agressive towards each other, so am I to assume they were fighting over the nest box? How should I treat her comb? Will they continue to peck at the blood or was this a one time deal? Thanks
 
Usually hens do keep pecking at a bloodied object - in your case a comb. If you have blue-kote I'd spray that on it. I also had a similar issue with all the hens using the same box and throwing fits if someone else was in it when it came time to lay. What I did was put a golf ball or a wooden egg in each box - it's really weird, but it seems to work for me. Now all four of my boxes are used.
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It's almost like they see 1 egg and they figure that's where all the eggs go. Go figure... Good luck. Going to TSC during chick days? You are brave... I've manage to stay away from there so far. My DH went to get dog food the other day and texted me pictures of all the chicks there. What a nut - we already have 16 chicks that I hatched in the basement.
 
I thought it was too cold here for chicks.....hmm. I know how chicken math works, but I've got 12 that just started to lay and chicks are a lot of work.
 

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