Injured hen -- should I sequester her?

[danlan]

I found one of my EEs in the nesting box with a small head injury:

I am guessing that this was caused by another hen as I don't see any evidence of predators infiltrating the coop or run (all the other hens are fine, no missing eggs, no signs of forced entry through the doors or walls).

Should I isolate this hen until this heals? I have a tiny pre-fab coop I could put in the run for her so no one else would bother her. If I do this, how do I go about reintegrating her to the rest of the flock? I haven't seen any abnormal bullying behavior in the flock before -- just the normal pecking order things. Although I haven't spent much time with the birds for the past week aside from ensuring they have adequate food and water.

 

[coach723]

Might have been a spat over who was going to use the nest box. Does she seem fine otherwise? No signs of illness? Sometimes a sick bird will camp out in a nest box and get attacked. Rather than totally isolate her, I would put her in a wire crate with her own food and water, in the run with the others, until it's healed enough to not get pecked at by others. That way they can all see each other, it's less stressful for her, and it makes reintegrating much easier after. If they can see blood, then they are likely to peck at the area making it worse. I would clean it up well and apply some plain triple antibiotic ointment to the area, it will probably heal up fairly quickly, though the feathers may not fill in until she molts.

 

[danlan]

Thanks @coach723! I checked on her a bit later and she was up and about like nothing was wrong.

There are 7 hens in the flock and they have access to 4 next boxes (I know, it's too many boxes), but each day they will choose one next box and only use that one. And it changes every day. lol. So maybe they were fighting about which box to use that day.

 

[SmiYa0126]

You could try putting golf balls in some of the other nesting boxes to encourage them to lay on more than one box.

 

[coach723]

I also use golf balls in mine, it works well. They often seem to want to use a box that's been 'used' and they consider the golf balls to be eggs. I have a lot fewer spats that way.