Hen Constantly Scratching until Nails Bleed

[PlumeandPine]

I have a ten month old blue cooper maran hen who was acting totally normal until three/four days ago.

Suddenly she stopped laying her eggs in the hen box and now lays them on the poop shelf. She also went from sleeping on the roosting bars (which are directly above the poop shelf) to now sleeping on the poop shelf itself. The problem is she constantly is pacing and scratching at a specific portion of the poop shelf to the point that she has worn down three of her nails/claws to the quick and now they constantly bleed. It appears she is trying to remove the hemp bedding and lay on the bare wood shelf. She also acts kinda manic pacing in that area consistently as well.

I clean the wounds and her feet with antibacterial soap and vetricyn and hold pressure to stop the bleeding but then the next day she just opens her wounds again with more scratching. Also put quick stop on the worn down nails but that hasn’t worked either.

I have cleaned the shelf and checked it and there is nothing there/no reason for the scratching. No other hens are acting this way. They all eat and drink the same thing every day and have been on the same diet for months. She is eating drinking fine not lethargic and still laying eggs.

How do I get her to stop scratching/exhibiting this behavior?

 

[Lacy Duckwing]

To me it sounds like nesting box anxiety. I've seen this behavior (though not to the extreme of bleeding) with some of my hens. On my hen, Twyla, she's has outgrown it to a certain point, though on rare occasions I'll see her do it again. Can you remove the poop board temporarily? For my hens, putting down a deep layer of sawdust shavings helped a lot. (Some farm stores sell it, though not all.) The sawdust wasn't as easy to kick out as the shavings were, therefore the hens couldn't scratch it out as badly. Layering the bottom of my nesting boxes with cardboard also helped, but it did more for protecting the eggs. The cardboard would eventually need to be replaced because they'd scratch perfect holes through it until they got to the wood again.

Where is this hen in the pecking order? What breed is she? How often do you clean the coop and poop board? Have you checked your flock for mites or lice?

If this is nesting box anxiety, please note it can be genetic. I tested this by breeding my hen Twyla and one of her daughters, Bandit, is about as bad as she was when she had first started laying. I haven't gotten her the sawdust yet, but I put the cardboard down and she's already scratching through it.