my chicken continuously gets attacked by others..

[kaylanoto]

she's been inside the big coop for quite some time now.. she came with 4 others and no one gets picked on like she does.. the chickens seem to even team up and one will jump on top of her and hold her down while the others will help peck at her comb and her body.. it is terrible and I am not sure why it is her.. we've never had any problems even close to this

.. how can I stop it?

 

[kaylanoto]

also it mainly happens when she goes and lays in the nesting area like this.. my bigs girls go crazyyy.. however there's more than one nesting box and yet if this girl sits in any of them she gets hurt for it! they are also free ranged and I've even seen one of the girls chase after her for no reason.. I'm not sure if I can do much, but maybe separate her? but I was really hoping they would learn to get along, it's been prob close to 2 months that they've been combined

 

[traci808]

I'm so sorry to hear you are having trouble. I'm not very experienced, but I figure if I respond it will increase the likelihood of others responding to your post.

About a year ago, we had a hen getting picked on by all the others. Previously, they had all gotten along just fine, and then I noticed them going after her. They went out of their way to pick on her. She also seemed to take her sweet time in the nesting box, much to the irritation of the rest of the flock. It turns out, she was sick. She had sour crop. We isolated her, nursed her back to health, and they've since eased up on her a lot. Maybe there's something going on with her that the rest of your girls are reacting to? Just a thought.

Anyway, I wish you and your bullied hen good luck!

 

[cafarmgirl]

It can be a tough problem to solve once they get it in their head to go after a bird like this. You can try watching closely to see if you have a bully bird/birds who instigate the attacks. If you notice a pattern with one or more birds you could try pulling them out for a week or more and see if things settle down. Sometimes once the trouble makers are removed the others settle down. Another way to go about it is to pull out the bird being attacked and add in one or two known low ranking, docile birds with her. After a week or so if things are fine add another bird or two from the main flock and see if things go ok, then just continue on that way and see if you can get them to forget about attacking.

 

[seminolewind]

I have 3 Polish sisters who have always been close. But one started to get picked on by others and even the rooster. She ended up hiding all day. There were about10 Polish in a large pen. There was no reason for it. So she lived with the silkies for 3 years without a problem. Now it's a silkie roo, and 3 Polish girls who are all docile and no problem. But at the beginning of all this it was actually a group attack at times. I had no choice but to separate her out. I even tried to put her back a year later, but they attacked her again.