HELP!!!! My chicken was pecking 2 others in the flock and there was a large bloody spot.

[csusanne]

Just one of my chickens was pecking 2 others in the flock and there was a large bloody spot on them. There are 8 hens in all and they are older hens. I have had them about 2 years. They were older when I got them. My husband and I happened to notice her really aggressively picking and making the spot on both chickens even more bloody. She was doing it to 2 of them. She wouldn't stop chasing them. We tried getting her to stop and she was just crazy pecking at them both. The others were all doing fine. Finally my husband got her and put her away by herself. He is going to get some Blu-Kote in the morning to help the 2 bloodied chickens heal. It seemed to happen so quickly. They looked so bad before we knew it. Luckily my husband was out there with them at the time. He was tending to a new young flock of 9 that we just put outside, that we had separated from them , but they could still see them. We have tried always giving them what they need to eat and also giving them mealworms. This has just never happened before. Even when the 2 poor hens heal (hopefully the others didn't pick up the habit) I really don't want to put the pecking one back into the flock. Is this normal? I am surprised after all this time that this would happen. What caused this and what should I do with this aggressive chicken?

 

[xXChickenTenderXx]

The chickens might be bored. What I would do is start hanging up lettuce or buying some meal worms at a pet store to avoid this.

How big is the space you have them in?

For your aggressive chicken, they have a such thing as chicken glasses which makes your chickens unable to attack one another. Studies have shown that they are still able to drink water and eat food with these glasses. You keep them on until the aggressive chicken can heal from its sudden cannibalism.