In my experience, chickens heal up remarkably well if you can keep the other birds from pecking her. So, isolation is important. I had one young one this winter who literally got scalped; the entire top of her head was missing the skin and flesh to the skull. She got to be a house chicken for a few weeks, but she did fine and is back with the rest of the flock. Hopefully yours will heal as well.It seems I'm not having a good hatch rate this time. Of 11 Buttercups, 8 made it to lockdown and I had 5 that pipped, zipped and said "hello" to us within an hour starting Thursday evening. But everything else in that incubator is in slow mode. I have 2 Arkansas Blues, 2/4 Salmon Faverolles, and 1/5 olive eggers. Not a one of the Marans from AyeUp have pipped, either. It seems the larger the egg, the slower they are coming out this time. So that means of the total 38 eggs I set, only 23 made it to lockdown and at day 22 only 10 of those have hatched. Hope the rest make an entrance today.My second incubator went into lockdown yesterday--those all look good. Lots of silkie/showgirls, silver penciled rocks, bbs marans, and wheatens in there. I also had serious chicken drama when I got home from work yesterday. We saw blood all over the back neck of one of our light brahma girls. My first suspicion was the 5 month gigantic sized wyandotte. They are all in a grow out run together until I'm sure they are doing their jobs well and can separate by breed. So she is apparently his favorite lately. His hormones kicked in about two weeks ago. He's been chasing her for days. I pick her up--and I haven't posted pics because it was REALLY nasty-- but the back of her neck is laid open from just behind her left ear to about a quarter inch behind her right ear. All the way across. When I grabbed the feathers to lift so I could see how bad it was, ALL of that skin is cut open. You could just peel the skin and take her whole face right off.
I've never seen a cut on a chicken like this. We washed it good with filtered water and put antibiotic cream on it. She is now in one of the transport cages in DH's shop until she heals. Should I do anything else to it? Anything better I should buy and put on it? Give her oral antibiotics just in case? POOR thing! She's so sweet...dumb as a stick, but a sweet girl.
I went all through that run and the coop and there is nowhere she could have gotten her head caught--so the question is still did the big cockerel really do this to her? At 5 months, he is 7 pounds. He is larger than every bird I have that is in the year old range. I have seen him chase the girls, grab them, and jump them , but I've not seen him be aggressive towards them when he does.
