Dark Cornish Bully?

[Chubbicthe2nd]

Any luck with Dark Cornish being decent to gentle breeds (Sussex, Australorp), or will she terrorize them?

She pecks at them and may be eating their eggs. Should we just have her for dinner?

 

[Rose the Legbar]

Does ‘pecking at them’ mean running at the others from the opposite side of the coop to go after the others? Or is it more of if the other chickens are next to her and she pecks them. Pecking can be a flock order sort of thing, hens peck to assert dominance.

Also what is leading you to believe she is egg eating? Depending on where you are in the world, many places hens are slowing down egg production dramatically due to less sunlight hours and molting.

 

[Chubbicthe2nd]

Does ‘pecking at them’ mean running at the others from the opposite side of the coop to go after the others? Or is it more of if the other chickens are next to her and she pecks them. Pecking can be a flock order sort of thing, hens peck to assert dominance.

Also what is leading you to believe she is egg eating? Depending on where you are in the world, many places hens are slowing down egg production dramatically due to less sunlight hours and molting.

They were fighting over food when she picked on them. Actually it wasn't even food, it was some fresh green grass I had thrown in their coop since they seem to like it.

Also we haven't figured out the egg eater. About every other day we find a pecked egg (5 in the last 2 weeks), and once it was actually opened and dripping. The other times it was like one little circular hole, as if one of the chickens had pecked a hole in it and then chickened out of doing anything else to it.

I was suspecting the egg pecking culprit was the dark Cornish since she was scratching around the nesting box area. But I would have to do more tests to figure it out, I'll try isolating one at a time to figure out who's pecking the eggs.

 

[Rose the Legbar]

The pecking at the others is just a dominance thing and she is pushing the others away from her snacks.

The holes in the eggs could be someone accidentally stepping on an egg when trying to move around on the nest. Egg eaters will eat everything in the egg. If you want to, you can get a roll away nest box so they don’t accidentally step on and break the eggs. I have had many occurrences where a hen was moving around the nest and accidentally stepped on an egg in the process.

 

[Chubbicthe2nd]

The pecking at the others is just a dominance thing and she is pushing the others away from her snacks.

The holes in the eggs could be someone accidentally stepping on an egg when trying to move around on the nest. Egg eaters will eat everything in the egg. If you want to, you can get a roll away nest box so they don’t accidentally step on and break the eggs. I have had many occurrences where a hen was moving around the nest and accidentally stepped on an egg in the process.

Thank you for this, we put extra padding in the coop (filled it with big wood shavings, large flake) and we haven't had a single hole in an egg since. Also, we went from getting 9 eggs a week to 13+. I wonder if what was going on was they were just accidentally stepping on it and then once it was broken...

Also, I think the sussexes have surrendered to her. She doesn't appear to be picking on them anymore.

 

[Chubbicthe2nd]

So update on the dark cornish. She now doesn't pick fights at all, and suddenly got a lot more tame. She also started squatting when you petted her. And she started sitting on eggs. I suspect she started laying and she wasn't before. This would also explain the "missing" eggs .... And her puberty mood swings.

Quite a sweet little bird actually. I'm starting to like her.