My chickens are stressed!

[LadyRen]

My poor chickens are stressed , so the vet says, from (we think) our mean rooster who we gave to a different family (they call him Tamales now). So one of them is pulling her feathers out! Poor girl. They are free range chickens and can wander around the property all day and go in thier coop at night.

Do you think I should lock them up in the run again? I am hoping it was just the rooster that stressed them out, but our dogs do like to run after them every once in a while. I just want to eliminate the stress and not add any more by locking them up, but I thought they wouldn't have to worry about anything in there because theya are safe. What do you think?

Thanks in advance!

 

[centrarchid]

What are you feeding them and do they have access to dust / dirt for bathing? Moult is also approaching and birds in lay tend to look pretty bad if doing both at same time.

 

[LadyRen]

We feed them the Purina Layers pelets along with a bucket of oyster shell. They also get lots of cracked corn, scratch, and meal worms. They are just a year old but I was wondering if moulting was coming because they others are looking a litle less feathered. If that is all it is that would be great!!

 

[Mac in Wisco]

It can be hard to pinpoint feather picking problems. Running around free-range doesn't sound all too stressful. Stress in chickens usually refers to flock-wide problems that are usually related to overcrowding or poor living conditions. I assume the vet checked her for parasites?

Is she at the bottom of the pecking order? Is she skittish around other birds or can she hold her own? Sometimes hens just get picked on due to being different; being smaller, slower, different color, what have you. We always have some social pariahs in our flock that are consistently picked on by other birds.

 

[LadyRen]

Mac - love your pic!

Hm, those are good questions. They all seem to hold thier own around the goats and Alpacas and don't seem to bother each other too much. Maybe it was just the Roo that was the problem? She isn't the smallest and they are all Black Copper Marans. The vet did check for patasites and found eggs but no lice so he gave us meds for the whole flock. We have mised the dimetrius earth in our dirt so they stay pretty clean (it works for goats too!). We have some new chicks that we will need to put out there soon but I don't want to stress the big girls out - do you think it will?