Help! Mama hen pulling tail chicks tail feathers.

[HollidayHens]

I have 6 baby chicks that one of my hens hatched out on May 1st so they are just now 2wks old. She has been a great mom last year and this year has been a great mom up until today. She started pulling the tail feathers out of one of the babies and has now started pulling the feathers of some of the other babies too. She still is trying to protect them/calling out to them/ and when giving food and treats she calls to them to come eat. Why has she all of a sudden started to do this and what should I do? She has been in a larger outdoor space in her own "broody box" small coop in a seperate fenced off section of our large run with all of our other chickens and rooster.

 

[LaFleche]

I have 6 baby chicks that one of my hens hatched out on May 1st so they are just now 2wks old. She has been a great mom last year and this year has been a great mom up until today. She started pulling the tail feathers out of one of the babies and has now started pulling the feathers of some of the other babies too. She still is trying to protect them/calling out to them/ and when giving food and treats she calls to them to come eat. Why has she all of a sudden started to do this and what should I do? She has been in a larger outdoor space in her own "broody box" small coop in a seperate fenced off section of our large run with all of our other chickens and rooster.

Check them for lice/mites and pasty butts.
Momma hens try to keep their chicks clean of parasites and poop that can get stuck to the butts.

You can also feed them some scrambled or mashed cooked eggs as the crumble or pelleted feed is often lacking in animal protein.

Welcome to the BYC community!

 

[HollidayHens]

Check them for lice/mites and pasty butts.
Momma hens try to keep their chicks clean of parasites and poop that can get stuck to the butts.

You can also feed them some scrambled or mashed cooked eggs as the crumble or pelleted feed is often lacking in animal protein.

Welcome to the BYC community!

Thank you for the tips and the welcome! I did check them over, and haven't seen any signs of anything wrong/pests. Two of the chicks tails are bloody and missing a good portion of their feathers, and she has tried pulling the wing feathers of a few of the other's feathers. I was worried it was a protein issue too, since she was plucking them and sometimes dropping them to feed to the babies. I gave them a bunch of dried black soldier fly larva and scattered some extra scratch grains around for her to forage on and maybe distract her to see if that helped, which I did for a few minutes, before she went back to pulling feathers again. She is definitely hurting them, because they are protesting /crying out. We feed them the Kalmbach chick starter crumbles which are high in protein, so I just don't understand. I have her temporarily separated with the rest of the main flock since I can't be out there the whole time supervising. I'm afraid she is going to eventually seriously hurt one of them, more then they already are.