Help! I've been asked to trim a beak

[billmac]

A friend of ours has 6 hens, one of which is pecking the heck out of the butts of the other 5. She is reluctant to kill it, so she has asked me to trim it. (which I've never done). I will probably err on the side of caution and just trim a little. Should I do top and bottom? Are bird beaks like nails, with a dead part and a sensitive part? These birds are almost a year old. I suppose a little pain is better than the stew pot, but I read somewhere that they can suffer pain all their life.

She has tried tarring the pecked birds but that doesn't seem to stop the behavior.

I am planning on using dog nail clippers.

Any ideas? Advice? Warnings?

 

[poultrycrazy]

Anyone?

 

[TriciaHowe]

Peepers would probably work better.... http://www.nationalband.com/nbtgame.htm
Also make sure that any pecked areas on the other birds are coated with something like Blue Kote so they don't keep picking at the red areas. I don't think that trimming the beak would work in this instance.

 

[AinaWGSD]

Trimming the beak will not help in this case. Yes, beaks are like nails in that they have a sensitive part and a "dead" part without any blood supply. But the "dead" part isn't that long on a healthy bird's beak (they can get very long in birds with beak malocclusions that cause the upper and lower beak to wear abnormally). In order to trim the beak back far enough to reduce her ability to peck the other birds sore you will have to cut way back into the sensitive portion of the beak. It will be very painful and very bloody. If you decide to go through with it, make sure you have a lot of styptic powder on hand to stop the bleeding.

I agree, peepers would probably work better. She could also try completely isolating the bully, out of sight and sound of the other birds, for a week or two and then reintroducing her to the flock. By taking her out of the flock for a while she will loose her position in the pecking order and when she comes back she will have to find a new spot in the order. Isolating and then returning a bully to the flock can be an effective way of taking a bully down a few rungs.

In the event that you should ever actually need to trim a beak, I do not recommend nail trimmers. There's too much risk of them splitting the beak. A dremmel with a grinding bit would be a better way to trim the beak back to the proper length. Not only will it not split the beak, but the bit moves at a high enough speed that it will usually cauterize any bleeding that does occur.