Do other hens peck at bald spots my roo caused?

[flickerfarkle]

Back in May I posted that I was having a roo that was getting too rough on his hens, plucking bare spots on their backs. I sent that roo to Camp Kenmore and gave the hens a couple of weeks to heal up. After two weeks I replaced him with a youngster about eight weeks old but not before I put an extra hen in that cage, bringing his total of hens to six.

A month since switching to a different rooster and it appears the plucked spots on the hens' backs are still growing. I've already isolated that rooster so now what I'm wondering is, is it a certainty that the roo was to blame or will the other hens also peck at a bare spot on other hen's backs? In which case the new rooster might be blameless, and there's really no hope of the injured hens healing.

I understand they'll peck at an anal prolapse but I don't recall anyone speaking to them attacking a plucked spot on another hen.

 

[sourland]

They will feather peck/pluck.

 

[Nabiki]

There are a few things that can cause the baldness. An overenthusiastic male is one. Feather plucking is another. Excess heat can cause some as well.

Feather plucking can be aggression, it could also be insufficient protein in their diet.

 

[Slothinc]

Camp Kenmore

 

[flickerfarkle]

When I emptied the droppings tray from that cage this week, there were quite a few feathers in the poop. I've got four cages of birds and I noticed there were no feathers to speak of in the any of other three so it looks like I've got an ongoing feather-plucking problem. It was short-sighted of me not to be on the look-out for this earlier.

I figure the hens that are being attacked need some relief, and as for the others, I can't tell who shot John, so I'm going to replace them all. That cage is my best egg producer but they're also my oldest birds, going on 15 months. They'll be 17 months old by the time this new batch matures, which is close to their twilight years anyway. I'm gathering eggs now to start a new incubation. As soon as I've got this new batch hatched, I'll send all those old birds to that great gumbo pot in the sky. Which is good timing because I'm down to my last jar of gumbo from last autumn's batch.