How to catch a chicken...Any ideas?

[nancy1zak]

Jody...The other chickens don't like her I am assuming. They pick on her and bully her. If she gets in their dust bath, they take their feet and claw at her until she gets out. We built a bigger pen, built a 2'x2' sand box for an extra dust bath, added 3 extra roosts in the pens, let them out when we are outside in the evening to free range, give the BOSS, scrambled eggs. They just don't like her. Sometimes they will just walk by her and boop her on the head with their beaks. She used to just take it all the time, now she is getting out of the way, but she has a tiny bare spot about the size of a dime that is on the base of her back where they have plucked the feathers out. : ( We were going to give her back to the lady we got her from. Even though she has more coops and barns to put her in, we felt it was best to keep her and try to work through it because if we put her in as a stranger to a whole new flock of chickens they might treat her even worse. We have thought about getting two more chickens to add to our flock and maybe that would help, but...we aren't sure if that will or won't and don't want to make a bad situation worse. Catching her to put the Blue Kote on has been a problem. The saddle seemed to make her disabled and the other chickens were "eyeing" her up...so, we removed it. And, I have even taken her out of the pen for a while and put her in a rabbit hutch that we moved next to the coop and run. So, they could see her, but not get at her. Nothing really made much difference. I have Hot Pick that I can apply to. Now that we have founds ways to catch her...keeping her coated hopefully will help.

 

[Hollywood Chickens]

you can try carrying her around and pecking the other hens head with her head, that will make her higher in the pecking order. but if you are having trouble catching her it might not be so easy.

What breeds are they? I noticed that the hens with the largest combs are at the top of the pecking order.

 

[Hollywood Chickens]

I just looked at your page. Buffs peck at everyone, I sold mine because they were causing fights. the EE is the smallest breed of all of your others so she will be pecked more. putting her on a higher roost might help, and if all else fails get her hat!

 

[nancy1zak]

Quote:
We have 3 Buff Orpingtons, 2 Rhode Island Reds, 2 Bantam Cochins...and Nema...our EE that gets bullied. The ones that pick on her the most is one of the Bantam cochins and one of the Rhode Island Reds. Even though the Buff Orptingtons are bigger...they don't seem to peck. We feel part of the problem is Nema is the only one of her breed. But, since she is skittish to begin with we don't want another EE. And,..yes..your goat is ADORABLE! How much work is it to take care of a goat? We are on 5 acres...a goat would make a nice lawnmower. You can see my chickens on my bycpage.