After a week of having my queen hen peck at the other girls at night I have put her in chicken jail. She is fine during the day but as the sun goes down and everyone heads to the coop for the night she will peck anyone that steps on her roost in front of the three nest boxes. There are 4 roost bars but everyone wants to roost in the same place. I tried to accept it as pecking order, I tried to hold and pet her until dark then put her in but she still pecked. I even pulled her feathers after I saw her peck but nothing worked. Tonight I snatched her up and put her in a dog kennel in my husbands shop. She'd better get a better attitude!
Are the roosts at the same height? You may have different factors at work here but often people have the ladder roosts with increasing heights of the bars. If this is the case in your coop I would suggest you change it. The highest roost is the most desirable, so having ones if different heights will cause competition.
My birds have a pecking party almost every night when they go to roost and the roosts are all on the same level(which does help). It looks vicious and 'mean', but no blood is drawn, it's just what they do. Let them be chickens.
Leave it alone. You're making any problems worse by pulling her feathers and such. I'm sure she sees the feather pulling as a challenge, and has to assert her dominance. When you separate her and put here back, shes going to have to reassert herself by beating the heck out of the other hens. Unless shes doing severe physical damage (blood everywhere), this is all completely normal chicken behavior.
Thanks for the help, my roosts are the same height. She was let out of jail this morning to range with her buddies and is in the coop tonight. I just won't watch. I work 9-5 so I let them out in the morning before work and it's getting dark once I get home so they're already back in the coop once I get home. I'll just have to hang out w them on the weekends.
I know it is hard to watch but the best thing to do is to let it be. I just introduced 2 pullets into my flock and let them decide which of my 2 coops to roost. It is heart breaking to see how the older hens peck them every night but it only last few minutes until every one settles down. The coop they chose has less hens (only 4) so it is better for them. My other coop has 11, six of them are pullets and they are fierce with each other (Mediterranean breed, not having any more of those anymore). It takes them longer to settle down, they are all over the coop jumping up and down from one roosting box to another (which are exactly at the same height) pecking at each other, getting in and out into the run. Just watching all that activity tires me. At the beginning, when I first started keeping chickens it pained me to see all these happenings every night, specially if one of my favorites was the one being pecked. It took me a while to come to terms to the fact that this is the way chickens are and as long as there is not any serious damage, we should leave them alone.
