Orpington feather picking problem - need advice please!

[the1much]

sounds like everything is gonna be just fine,, if they were gonna kill her, they wouldnt stop the first attack,, so no worries,, they've already worked out the pecking order,, and now the chasing is to just re-assert that, which they'll do for a few days.
ya taking them back and forth isnt good,, let them get it all worked out,, if you take the new bird out for 20 minutes or so, then put her back in,, they start all over again,, they think your putting a new bird in every time you stick her back in there,, which just makes it go on and on...
if they were gonna kill her, they would of done it right off,, so i think they'll all get along fine.

and CONGRATS on the first egg

 

[caralouise1974]

Hey everyone, thanks for the reassurance. I hate to see her being chased off the food and water and being constantly harrassed. It's an awfil sight.

Anyways, yep, great news about our first egg, so Bella got a big cuddle for that!

We have slightly wimped out with the pecking order situation though (mainly because I can't bear the idea of us both being at work all day tomorrow and unable to keeop a watchful eye on things) - we have rigged up some bamboo canes across the run like this lady has done

http://club.omlet.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=12688&sid=20ee29a00d214e111069b79c9c39360b

so they can see and peck at each other, but not actually get at each other. It's great actually - they can suss each other out and are in the same space, but they're completely relaxed and ignoring each other almost completely and Audrey is looking much happier (she even started taking some water and preening herself once she realised they couldn't get at her). We still plan to have them all sleep in the same coop at night and just give them separate areas of the daytime run for a few days before doing full re-introductions. In the meantime, plenty of free ranging together, and we've ordered a 6x4ft run extension.

Did I do wrong by setting this bamboo thing up? I hope not...

 

[the1much]

nope you didnt do wrong

its just that some people do that expecting that will make it a no fighting thingy, when they do stick them together,, but thats not how it is lol,, ive had chickens next to each other for over a year, with just some chicken wire between them,, but if 1 went into the others pen,, the chase was on. its almost like they can see through it when they wanna fight through it, but once they walk away, its like a solid wall to them, and the next time they meet at the fence, then they fight again lol. my hens fought through the fence WAY more then my roo's would, in fact only a couple of my roos would try, but the rest never did.

 

[caralouise1974]

So glad I didn't mess everything up!

We're hoping that once the bigger run is set up she'll have more escape routes to choose from, and she won't be in their faces so much. 6x4ft is quite simply too small when there's a non-stop chase going on! There was food/water/grit/poo flying everywhere and the feeders and drinkers acted as large and awkward hurdles!

We'll be rigging the extension up on Monday, so we only have tomorrow and the weekend to get through with this mad bamboo arrangement!

Thanks for all your kind words the1much, I don't know how we'd have got through all this stuff without someone guiding us and telling us whether we were doing it right or not! xxx