Pecking my Polish hens to death...

[ryan9923]

Hi, I'm new on these boards. We have 11 hens that are about 6 months old now. We've just started getting eggs this week

3 of our chicks are Polish. They are so neat looking with their poofy heads. The other chickens decided to pluck all of the feathers out of one of their heads...he's completely bald on top now. As soon as the little straw-like stubbies start to grow back they pluck those ot too. Sometimes he bleeds and we have to put some neosporin on it. Just recently they started pecking another one of the Polish chickes. Today that got her so bad they pulled out most of her tail feathers, and she was bleeding pretty badly. I ended up building an infirmary coop (I'm calling it the re-coop for now!) and I moved the 3 Polish chicks there so they could heal and grow their feathers back.

My question is: Is there anything I can do to stop the pecking? Any ideas? Also, once the Polish chicks get better, can we re-introduce the to the flock with them having a chance of not getting picked on?

We invested a good amount of time, money, and effort in building their coop and chicken run, and would really love it if they could all enjoy the space! Or are we going to have to keep them seperate?

 

[sourland]

Sadly enough, other chickens tend to peck the crests off of Polish chickens. Sometimes if you trim their crests, they can better see the attackers. This gives them a better chance of escaping their attacks. Once they start this pecking behavior it is difficult if not impossible to correct. Polish do best with really gentle (like silkies) or smaller chickens.

 

[welasharon]

I have three polish living with a cuckoo marans and they did fine together because they were raised together. I got three black sexlinks for eggs and they ran my polish to the ground. I rehomed them and came home with a tiny bantam hen who the polish chased and tortured for a couple weeks. Finally they have all settled down and mostly get along. I was not going to tolerate them picking on the polish.

 

[ryan9923]

We're thinking after all of their feathers grow back and the look healthy that we'll try to re-introduce them to the flock. If they get picked on again, We're going to have to either build them a seperate coop or find them a new home...