HELP!! My Chickens are attacking one of the other girls!!

[promisefarm]

This is awful, my RIR's have been picking on one of the other hens, now they have attacked her so much that she is bloody. They are only focusing on her bottom. They have pecked her bottom so much that her anus is very bloody and swolen, its awful. The victim is a beautiful healthy robust bird. I cant figure out why they are doing this or what to do about it. I have cold-hosed her bottom, and put her in the pen with my goats for now, but I just don't know what to do. Please help

 

[Gypsy07]

See if you can figure out who's doing the pecking and isolate the ringleader for a few days. Sometimes this brings them down the pecking order a bit and stops any bullying. If you isolate the pecked one, often when you re-introduce her the cycle just starts all over again.

As for what to do about the injury, wash it in warm/hot salty water, carefully pat dry, then spray with one of those antibiotic sprays that turns the skin dark blue/green/purple to stop the other birds wanting to peck at it. I use a dark bluey green terramycin spray but you can also use something called Blue-Kote that I've seen mentioned on here a lot. As it's right at her butt, you'll have to be extra vigilant about checking for infection, and you should probably clean and re-spray it at least once a day...

P.S. You might get more replies if you repost this in the Injuries section of the forum...

And welcome to BYC!

 

[promisefarm]

Ok thank you so much I will try to figure out how to choose which forum to post in now.

 

[chicmom]

Hi! That's one of the bad things about chickens. They can be really mean! I would spray her bottom with Blue Cote. She will have a royal blue behind, but for some reason, that color isn't attractive to chickens, plus Blue Cote will help her heal too.

Once chickens see red, they just go nuts! So I would definitely paint her bottom blue. I would also take a few hens, the ones that really aren't agressive, and put them into the goat pen with her, then you can put them all back together when her bottom is better, and she won't be like a new hen all on her own, getting pecked on again.

Good luck and I hope she recovers.....

Sharon