Chickens fighting after show

[alyssamurph396]

I have two Sebright hens that I keep together in a small coop in my backyard. Last week, I took one of them to show at the fair and she stayed there for a week. The other who got left behind has had me flying out of bed at 6AM every morning due to her insane crowing to throw her in a cage in the garage until around noon. I assumed that it was separation anxiety. Noisy chickens are one of the biggest issues at my place, due the fact that we live in a residential area where chickens may or may not be allowed. When I brought the other one back from the fair, I was eager to get everything back to normal as it was before. No such luck. They looked fine when I put them back together, but when I checked on them again that afternoon, the hen who was left behind had been severely beaten up, with feathers plucked from the back of her head and neck and left bloody and she had also not been allowed to leave the nesting area of the coop, per the demands of the other hen, and was eating and drinking ravenously when we took her bully away.

For the past couple days, I have had to keep each of them in a separate cage in the garage, because if only one was alone in the coop, they would start crowing. My mom is losing her patience very quickly and is very close to making me get rid of them. Today, I put one in the coop and another in a guinea pig cage right up against the coop to hopefully get them back on good terms again.

Has anyone ever had to deal with a similar situation before or has any advice on how to handle this?

 

[centrarchid]

Hens crowing? Re-check gender. If not to be shown further this year then let them fight it out under supervision to make certain no real damage occurs. If you prefer further limiting odds of harm, then stay with combatants and interfere with their ability to properly flog each other as they attack. You can speed there becoming exhausted reducing the time required for ranking to be determined. Make certain after one gives that other breaks off attacks relatively quickly. If to be shown again short-term then separate and find another means to muffle crowing sound.

 

[keesmom]

We really need to see pictures of these "hens".

 

[JeanR]

Any time you take a bird out of a pen of "friends" for even a week, they "do not know" the returnee and life is miserable, even to death sometimes! I have often kept sisters with a cockerel, and when one sets, she is busy with setting for 21 days and then for some weeks with her chicks. Setting hens are always given private pens. They are NOT friends when the hen returns, and sometimes never are again--but if they have enough room, sometimes they will have an "understanding" and can live in the same pen again, but it is repeated after laying a new clutch and both may have duties with chicks==IT simply means MORE PENS! The hen of yours that crows, is it really a hen?. Sebright cockerels have "henny plumage" one of only several breeds that does, but you may well know this. And a few, rare few, hens do crow at times. So you will have to work this out! Good luck.