Chickens picking on small one's tail, adding to flock, learning lessons

[varina_gardens]

Hello! I am a first time chicken owner this year. My questions are actually at the bottom of this post, I just wanted to give some background first!

I started with three Golden Comets - 16 weeks when I got them. They free-ranged in an electric poultry fence for a few months with our two Embden geese, until the geese got to adult size and started picking on the chickens. The geese are much larger and would begin attacking the chickens a few times a day. We knew we had to get the chickens out of this situation (and learned that next time we must raise our geese WITH chickens! Not on their own). We built a separate, chicken wire-enclosed run for the chickens (10 ft x 15 ft) and they have a coop in there as well that we shut them in at night. The three Golden Comets live in this new run.

When we built the new run we thought we'd like to get 3 more chickens. I think we started to run before we could walk! We purchased 3 chickens at about 8 weeks old (two Wyandottes and a Bielefelder). We went ahead and put the 3 young chickens in the chicken run with the 3 older (a few months old at this point) Golden Comets. Not a great idea we now see, as the 3 older chickens terrorized the 3 younger chickens and would not even really let them come out of the coop and into the run.
After 1 week of this we removed the 3 younger chickens from the run.

We moved the 3 young chickens out of the enclosed run and put them in a mobile a-frame (open bottom so they are on grass) coop inside the poultry fence with our geese. This worked great for 2 weeks until today! Of the 3 younger chickens, one is much smaller than the other two. When we got her, she had barely any tail feathers and her tail was bare skin. After 2 weeks of living in the a-frame coop she started growing more tail feathers. However she still gets picked on by the 2 other young chickens. Today I found that her tail was bloody and the other 2 chickens would pick at it every 5-10 minutes or so.

We immediately took her out of there and put her in an extra large kennel that we have with bedding and water. I cleaned off the blood from her tail and applied some hydrogen peroxide to her skin that was pecked at.

My question is - given the situation, what can I be doing better? What can I do going from here? We had hoped that the three young chickens could live in the a-frame coop (we move it daily to new grass) until they are big enough to go in the run with the 3 older chickens. But I am thinking now that the a-frame coop is small, and doesn't give a lot for the chickens to "do" during the day, so maybe that is why they keep picking on the smallest one's tail. How long should I keep the smallest one separate? Until her tail looks more healed?

Thank you for any advice!
varina_gardens

 

[varina_gardens]

The more I think about it, I think I should try and divide the 10 x 15 run in half so that the younger chickens have more room during the day. They are likely pulling the little one's tail feathers our of boredom since they are in the small a-frame. Finding a way to divide the 10 x 15 run will also make it easier to integrate the two "flocks" over time.

 

[aart]

I think we started to run before we could walk!

Yes, you did!
But sounds like you have found a solution...Kudos!

The more I think about it, I think I should try and divide the 10 x 15 run in half so that the younger chickens have more room during the day. They are likely pulling the little one's tail feathers our of boredom since they are in the small a-frame. Finding a way to divide the 10 x 15 run will also make it easier to integrate the two "flocks" over time.

 

[varina_gardens]

In case anyone reads this here is an update. We sectioned off a quarter of the big chicks' run last night and the three little chicks currently seem much happier. The big chicks won't let us hear the end of it but ultimately this might make integrating the two groups easier in a few weeks when the little chicks are bigger. Finishing the roof on the run today.


Our littlest one's tail healed and she still gets chased a bit by the other two but they have much more room now.

 

[varina_gardens]

Back with another update - we took out the divider a few weeks ago and now all 6 chickens live happily together! I would say the fence down the middle of the coop worked great for smoothing the transition. One day, one of the big chickens got into the little chickens' side and acted like it was "no big deal" so we knew it was time to try and have them all together. And it worked!

Now if we could just teach the Little Chickens to stop roosting on TOP of the coop at night (rather than in it) then we would be set!

 

[Kiraeh]

It sounds like you solved the problem pretty well!

One thing that works pretty well for me, and might be handy next time or for someone else with a similar problem, is I put my small a frame chicken tractor in the run and prop up one end with a rock or cinderblock, just high enough that the small chickens can go in and out and the big ones can't chase. Makes easy to integrate even fairly young chickens or much smaller bantams.

 

[aart]

Now if we could just teach the Little Chickens to stop roosting on TOP of the coop at night (rather than in it) then we would be set!

Um, you might need a bigger coop
How many birds total?
Pics of the inside of your coop?
A separate roost for the youngers would help.