Problem pullet...

[farmguycitygirl]

Hi all,

I have a problem pullet. :/

I bought two reds and two Ameracaunas three weeks ago. The Reds are friendly, and the smaller darker Ameracauna tends to hang with them when they actively seek out human company (which is nice, because I haven't had that happen before until they were older) but the whiter Ameracauna.... Not so much.

She's taken the top spot and is rough/mean with the other chicks, and doesn't let them access the food without being pecked. She's more scared of people (for no reason I know of, I've had her since day 2 or 3) than any chick I have ever raised. She would be disruptive to my other chickens...

I think she either needs relocating to another group of slightly older chicks, so she has a lower social position, or I might lose patience. I'm VERY patient, usually.

If anyone in the Round Rock/Austin area has some appropriately aged chicks (3-5 weeks?) and would like to give her a chance, drop me a line. No charge.

 

[janelle18]

I had some chicks in the spring time that were very mean to each other, constantly pecking each other in the eyes causing them to swell shut and become scabbed. Very disturbing I KNOW! We took the 'worst' ones and put them into a pen with chicks that were slightly older then them, and that smartened them up right away! the others we put in little individual 'jails' small cardboard boxes with mesh on top so they could still get heat. They had individual little water dishes and food bowls ( just half a yogurt cup that we had cut). Each day we would let them rejoin the others. if they still pecked back in jail they went. It didn't take long for them to figure it out>. I sounds like a lot of work, but it really wasn't. They just needed to grow-up a little and be put in there place. Maybe you can do something like this if you can't find a place to relocate it.

 

[farmguycitygirl]

I'd be happy to do that if nobody adopts her.

I think one problem is that because she dominates and guards the food, she is now half as big again as the other chicks, so she will always try to take a dominant position. I tried having two or three food locations so she couldn't guard them all, but she just freaked out and pecked everyone's eyes if they even looked at food.

I think she needs to be put with larger, wiser chicks.