pecking - Breed related?

[Nigellas]

This is our 3rd (or is it 4th?) year with hens - We've always had 4-6 hens in the same size coop as we currently have. Right now I have 4 ladies, all about a year old - we got them all over the summer. 2 Javas and 2 Marans. They are pecking the heck out of each other - I don't really see it happening a ton, but they look like crap. Is it these particular breeds (or one of them?) that makes them more prone to this behavior?

 

[chicmom]

You know, I had that happen one year.....I think over the winter when they're penned up more, they just get stir crazy and start pulling out eachother's feathers. A good idea is to just set a spell, and watch them....You might discover that one particular hen is doing the feather plucking.....a bully hen.

In my case, it was a pair of New Hampshire Reds that were pecking the crap out of everyone. So I rehomed them to a bigger farm.

Another thing to consider is lice. I never had lice until this winter. This is my third year with chickens, and I noticed some of the looked perfect, while others seemed very "scraggly" looking. My eyes aren't so great, but I managed to grab one up and look down into the feathers, and there were a few creepy-crawlies. I was so grossed out! But other BYC folks tell me that winter time is a common time for chickens to get lice. I didn't know that.

So I used seven dust--two applications and now no lice. A few of them still look kind of rough, but they should begin to improve with time.

Good luck! I hope you get things worked out,
Sharon