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Bad habits are hard to break. But if you have given them lots of room, toys to play with and proper nutrition, they should no longer be interested in pecking each other. The suet with seeds should do the trick. The suet has protein. We had some buckeye bantams pick the male bad. Once I got him well....and got Jacob (7) to feed the correct feed, the issue was over. the hens no longer pick his feathers.
Indeed, habits are hard to break. Let me tell you what I feed. Please critique! Green mountain organic layer pellets free choice (Corn based, soy protein). one, 1/4 lb hamburg every other day cooked with breakfast (when it is cold something cooked and warm[oatmeal, cooked hulled millet etc]) boss and whole oats as scratch. Will add suet/seed balls today/tomorrow. And of course free choice water (except at night because it was causeing ice buildup on the ceiling). I am out at first light to give them their H2O and feed. They do not have any artificial light.
Thanks!
How old are your birds?? How much oats are you feeding as a percentage of their diet?? If you do not need scratch to loosen the litter, you may want to skip it. Feeding scratch lowers the protein in their total diet. Buckeyes are more sensitive to this, so that may be why they are feather picking. Buckeyes also seem to like a lot of room..... We used to make a higher protein Layer Feed (19%) for birds like this, but we never sold enough to continue making it.... Most other breeds do better on lower protein diets (16%-17%). From what I know, when growing Buckeyes, protein should be 27-29% for the first 4-6 weeks, and 22% from there to about 17-18 weeks and then onto the layer feed. I would just try getting the scratch out of the diet, and get a little more protein into it....maybe a little more hamburg.
