I have tried EVERYTHING!! Help!

[FlyingFChick]

I have separated the ones that I have seen doing the pecking and put them in one coop and think that I may let them free range. The other ones are in another coop that has a big covered run with the 20 x 10 pasture access. They are already showing signs of new feathers!!

I hope this will work for them. Maybe if they are free ranging they won't get at each other. We have lots of trees that they could hide in if they have to. It just makes me nervous to have them out there. People do it all the time, right??

 

[dretd]

BigDaddy'sGurl :

Quote:
? Just went to look at my cat's food and for my adult cat it was 27% protein and for my kitten chow it was 40%... much much higher % than chicken feed...

I think bigdaddysgurl is reading 9-11% as a wet food which needs to be converted into a dry matter basis to compare to the dry food I believe you are referring to with the 27-40% protein. Canned food is often 70-80% or more water content and so you need to subtract out the moisture content from 100%, then divide the protein percent in to the result to get a number to compare apples to apples. For cat food the wet food is almost always higher in protein than dry. More important for me is the quality of the protein being fed, but that's a whole other can of worms.​

 

[dretd]

Quote:
Good luck to you! I hope the separation and free ranging will break the cycle.

I had a thought that has helped when I integrated young ones in with the old cranky ones this summer. I added some visual barriers in the runs so that the peckees could run and hide from the peckers. I added a lean-to, a high perch and about 5 20inch flower pots that were planted with grass and herbs and veggies. It was really interesting to see the young ones keeping the old gals in the corners of their eyes and keeping the pots between them and the top dogs. As a bonus, they enjoyed eating the plants and taking dust baths in tubs after they ate all the goodies.

 

[brahmapapa]

When i had a bad picking prob. to the point of cannibalism, here is what i did. i cut both top and bottoms of beaks back enough that they bleed. then i use a goat dis budding iron (which is nothing more than a soldering iron) pressed to the bleeding ends of the beak to cauterize the ends. the smell is yucky from burning beak, but it stops the bleeding, eventually the beaks grow back but the picking stopped. Painful to the bird, yes briefly but it stopped the picking, and a few mins later they were acting like nothing had happened. OF COURSE WITH ANY TYPE OF BEAK TRIMMING YOU CAN SUFFER SOME MORTALITY, I NEVER DID.