- Jan 26, 2013
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Hi, I am new to this forum and to having chickens and I was wondering if someone could help me. I'll try to give as much background as possible.
I had 2 pekin bantams, one died (I'm guessing of gape worm or it choked on something) days after getting them. I then tried to introduce another bantam but it tried to kill my bantam (Chocolate). I assumed the best idea was to have chicks so placed 6 eggs from a friends mums organic chickens. Chocolate did well but got off the eggs a couple of days before they were due to hatch. We took them to a breeder and put them in the incubator. 5 were hatched in january and are approx 4.5-5 months old. They lived in a separate run from Chocolate with one of the breeders bantams for a couple of months. When I returned the bantam she guessed at the sex of the chicks being 2 males and 3 females - a bit hard to tell as she didn't know what breed they are. I don't either I'm afraid. This made sense because as they grew the 2 'males' seemed to go at each other - Ice-cream was significantly larger than Memphis who appears to be a bantam. I don't think Ice-cream was. They weren't too agressive but just danced around one another.
One day my puppy dug under the fence of the chicken coop and when I came out Ice-cream was out of the coop and Memphis appeared to be injured. My puppy has been around the chickens with me and never done anything to them. Memphis was always very outgoing with him, pecking at his paws and following him around. I wondered if the boys had been fighting or whether Memphis had been doing is normal thing with puppy and puppy had tried to play with him and injured him in the process. Whatever happened Memphis has never been the same since. He is a shadow of the lively, friendly, approachable boy we loved so much. We also noticed that he was losing feathers on the top of his head and assumed Ice-cream was attacking him. Ice-cream continued to grow and look more like a Rooster and after a few days of pouncing on Chocolate, we decided he had to go. I hoped this would solve the problem but as soon as he was gone all the other started to bully Memphis. I tried to separate him but this seemed to make him nervous and even more unhappy. I really don't know what to do. I'm not even sure he is a Rooster or that the others are hens. The question I intended to ask at the start of this post was, can a rooster be at the bottom of the pecking order of hens or is there likely to be another rooster that we just don't know about or could Memphis be a hen? I know without seeing them these are probably dumb questions. I could take some photos. None have crowed besides Ice-cream before he left.
Thanks in advance for the help.
I had 2 pekin bantams, one died (I'm guessing of gape worm or it choked on something) days after getting them. I then tried to introduce another bantam but it tried to kill my bantam (Chocolate). I assumed the best idea was to have chicks so placed 6 eggs from a friends mums organic chickens. Chocolate did well but got off the eggs a couple of days before they were due to hatch. We took them to a breeder and put them in the incubator. 5 were hatched in january and are approx 4.5-5 months old. They lived in a separate run from Chocolate with one of the breeders bantams for a couple of months. When I returned the bantam she guessed at the sex of the chicks being 2 males and 3 females - a bit hard to tell as she didn't know what breed they are. I don't either I'm afraid. This made sense because as they grew the 2 'males' seemed to go at each other - Ice-cream was significantly larger than Memphis who appears to be a bantam. I don't think Ice-cream was. They weren't too agressive but just danced around one another.
One day my puppy dug under the fence of the chicken coop and when I came out Ice-cream was out of the coop and Memphis appeared to be injured. My puppy has been around the chickens with me and never done anything to them. Memphis was always very outgoing with him, pecking at his paws and following him around. I wondered if the boys had been fighting or whether Memphis had been doing is normal thing with puppy and puppy had tried to play with him and injured him in the process. Whatever happened Memphis has never been the same since. He is a shadow of the lively, friendly, approachable boy we loved so much. We also noticed that he was losing feathers on the top of his head and assumed Ice-cream was attacking him. Ice-cream continued to grow and look more like a Rooster and after a few days of pouncing on Chocolate, we decided he had to go. I hoped this would solve the problem but as soon as he was gone all the other started to bully Memphis. I tried to separate him but this seemed to make him nervous and even more unhappy. I really don't know what to do. I'm not even sure he is a Rooster or that the others are hens. The question I intended to ask at the start of this post was, can a rooster be at the bottom of the pecking order of hens or is there likely to be another rooster that we just don't know about or could Memphis be a hen? I know without seeing them these are probably dumb questions. I could take some photos. None have crowed besides Ice-cream before he left.
Thanks in advance for the help.
