foster farms rescue chicken - backyard issues

[Tami]

we rescued ellie, a chicken that fell off of a foster farms truck, recently. our runner duck and bantam silkie get along fine with her, but rosie, our (alpha) buff orphington, pecks her and is aggressive with her. first we seperated them, (ellie free ranges back yard, rosie in pen), then vice versa (rosie free, ellie penned with others, nice big backyard pen). rosie (and our duck gertrude) are upset about this seperation, and rosie is digging to try to get in. HELP! rosie is picking on ellie because she is weak, her legs are not very stable, so she sits a lot. any advise? how do we get rosie to leave ellie alone, but keep all the girls together??? ~ perplexed in paso robles, ca

 

[tiffanyh]

I dont know, but I have heard (and practiced this method) that when your dominate hen beats on the more submissive one you are supposed to be the alpha and "man handle" your aggressive hen a bit. I just yell and move the aggressive one out of the way with my foot. (( I DONT kick then chicken--OBVIOUSLY- just kind of push them away from teh more submissive one)). So far, it seems to be working, I guess not letting them fight make you the "alpha hen" and hopefully keeps them in check.

See what advice everyone else has??................

 

[DrakeMaiden]

LOL, I thought you were kidding when you said you had a Foster Farms foster chicken! But forgive me, this is a serious topic.

I'd like to hear what others have to say, because right now I have one duck that will NOT mingle with my newest generation of ducks. I've just kept them separate because of it and don't have much hope she will ever mingle.

Did you keep ellie separate for any period of time before introducing her to the others? I imagine she might smell like Foster Farms and whatever they were feeding her there, so that might be causing some of the problems. If it is an alpha hen thing, then yes, pretending to be the alpha hen should help, but you'll have to be vigilent about it and it will take some time.