Red Sex Link Hen is pulling at other chickens’ necks

[ChikadeeLite]

I have 5 red sex link birds, and for the most part,they’re sweet if not a bit dopey. However, for the past 2 days, my one red sex link, Panini, started neck pulling the other 4 birds during feeding. I went out to the run to feed them snacks (crickets and berrie), and Panini started yanking on Lil Bit (which caused a scene, nothing too bad, just Lil Bit flapping and flying past her)on the neck. She did this right after yanking Becky’s neck just a minute prior because she had crickets. This is starting to get worrying because she keeps doing it if I don’t intervene, I pick her up and she stops it for a few minutes before going back to neck pulling

Panini never did this type of thing before and everything I Google keeps calling it Roo behavior but she’s definitely an egg layer. She’s not eating feathers or anything, but she is pulling their necks. She is perfectly fine though when food is not present. When food is done, she’s back to acting sweet with them and no more neck pulling

Is this pecking order type behavior or should I separate Panini because she’s food aggressive?

 

[aart]

How old are these birds, in weeks or months?
Can you post a pic of the culprit?

 

[ChikadeeLite]

How old are these birds, in weeks or months?
Can you post a pic of the culprit?

They’re 24 weeks old and this is the little culprit. She’s normally pretty calm, it’s Greta (the one in the back I think) that tends to be the problem child at food time by hip checking the others.

But this time even she’s getting neck grabbed. In that pic they’re perfectly fine together, foraging even. Don’t know why the sudden shift when food is introduced

 

[Mrs. K]

How much space do you have? Are they all laying? And what kind of feed, and how much feed? Those are pretty common questions.

When you approach the pen, do all the birds run towards you and mill around your feet waiting for the treats? At first I rather liked this attention from the birds, but a highly respected poster on here, said that one should discourage it, and I now think he is right.

It rather makes for kind of a hysterical mob type action. Instead, put your feed up on something, check the water, the bedding...just hang out and watch until they get kind of bored with you and go back to being chickens.

The second thing is to widely scatter the treat over as big a distance as you can get. This makes getting treats and biting someone's neck much harder to do.

Mrs K

 

[ChikadeeLite]

How much space do you have? Are they all laying? And what kind of feed, and how much feed? Those are pretty common questions.

When you approach the pen, do all the birds run towards you and mill around your feet waiting for the treats? At first I rather liked this attention from the birds, but a highly respected poster on here, said that one should discourage it, and I now think he is right.

It rather makes for kind of a hysterical mob type action. Instead, put your feed up on something, check the water, the bedding...just hang out and watch until they get kind of bored with you and go back to being chickens.

The second thing is to widely scatter the treat over as big a distance as you can get. This makes getting treats and biting someone's neck much harder to do.

Mrs K

1. 200 square feet of space.
2.She and 3 others are laying. 1 is currently not I think. She's not Panini though. I'm suspecting Karen, another bird, is the one not laying but I know Panini is
3. Demor (I think that's right) brand of feed with 3 cups of food in the feeder at any time
4. They swarm, but not just for food. They hang around the door if I'm near by and will immediately go to the door if I'm at the door. Not just with treats but they get worse if I do have treats

I'll try to toss the treats more, but I've tried to keep them separate when giving out treats. They manage to swarm the treats instead.

(Like, if I brought out for mini corn on cobs, they'll swarm 2 of them and argue about it amongst themselves before they notice the other two on the floor. Because they're greedy)

 

[Mrs. K]

Don't feed them anything, until they calm down and move away from you. Don't give such big treats until you have given out the small treats well spread out.

Take a sorting stick or some handled thing and tap the ground right next to them when they are doing this.

Not sure if any of this will help, but I know, that while mine come to meet me at the door, they are much calmer, and not hysterical since I changed how I feed them.

MrsK