I just introduced a 4 to 5 month old Speckled Sussex into my pen where my 15 month old hens are yesterday. The day before I had her in a separate pen where she could have some indirect contact with the resident hens prior added her. Once I put in with the others there were a couple of pecking incidents, which I associated to establishing the pecking order and other than that everything appeared okay. This morning everything was fine when I left for work, however when I got home I found the new hen to have nearly all the feathers pulled out of the back of her head and it looked really bad. It looked very raw and inflamed and also appeared to break the skin in small places. I applied generous amounts of neosporin and put her back in the pen by herself. She seemed very calm and responded well to me touching the injuried area. Is this normal behavior for an established group or hens or am I dealing with one really mean hen?? As always thanks for any help you can provide.
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