Hen getting pecked at and seems down

Lainaoberreich

Hatching
Jul 11, 2025
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My hen (2 years old) started to get pecked at about a week ago. I have experienced this before but never this severe and none of the tricks i've used before seem to be working. Here some pictures to show you what is going on.
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Aww, that's awful!
Can you describe more about her environment, like size of coop and run, how many roosters, what you are feeding, size of entire flock.
Details like this give us a more thorough picture of what is happening.
there is around 25 chickens in a 20x15 run, we have one rooster, and they are getting fed layer feed from our local co-op
 
I would definatly keep her separated, as she has nowhere to go to escape these attacks with that many birds in that closed space.
She may be just unlucky and at the lower end of the pecking order. Flocks sometime single out someone and can get brutal, even resulting in death for the victim.
she needs to be compleetly healed before you attemp to re-ontroduce her.
do you have a pen or other enclosure for her? If so it would be best to separate her along with a non aggresive hen friend for a while.
You may have to eventually rehome her as sometimes these personalities are just never accepted back.
I would catch her, clean her wounds, put healing ointment in her. (This needs to be done to keep flys off) fly strike will kill her.
 
I would definatly keep her separated, as she has nowhere to go to escape these attacks with that many birds in that closed space.
She may be just unlucky and at the lower end of the pecking order. Flocks sometime single out someone and can get brutal, even resulting in death for the victim.
she needs to be compleetly healed before you attemp to re-ontroduce her.
do you have a pen or other enclosure for her? If so it would be best to separate her along with a non aggresive hen friend for a while.
You may have to eventually rehome her as sometimes these personalities are just never accepted back.
I would catch her, clean her wounds, put healing ointment in her. (This needs to be done to keep flys off) fly strike will kill her.
do you have any recommendations for healing ointments?
 
I would use something sticky, like bag balm, Corona ointment, even triple antibiotic ointment. Apply lightly but cover all the wounds.
She won't like it and may not sit still easily. But needs to be done if possible.
Can you catch her?
I always do my dictering after dark, because then I can just lift a chicken off the roost with no trouble.
I hope she recovers. She looks like a nice hen!
 
Clean her wounds with Hibiclens (Wal-Mart has it) or even Dawn dish soap and water. Triple antibiotic ointment is good, ensure it does not contain pain relief as this is toxic to chickens. Just the plain original triple antibiotic. The generic brand is fine, it's the same thing.

Do your chickens get out to free range at all or are they confined to the run all the time? Pecking and fighting can be caused from an over crowding problem if there at too many chickens for the space.
 

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