Reintroducing sick hen - other hens picking on her

[drdvmd]

Hello- I have a flock of four hens. One has been sick (under veterinary care) and we kept her indoors for 72 hours. She is feeling better. I put her outside with the other three hens tonight and they free ranged together for a few hours. Then we put everyone inside our run and two of the hens are pecking at her, to the point where she is hiding in the coop. I'm not sure what to do. If we keep her inside longer I would imagine the pecking won't improve but I also don't want them beating up on my girl that is recovering. What are the best strategies here? We have never seen this behavior before.

 

[Mrs. K]

To me, separating birds cause more problems than it is worth. She is a stranger to them, and they are pretty sure she is out to eat them out of food, water and shelter. Do a see no touch for a couple of days, or bring in a single bird out of the remaining three, put with the picked on one. They will duke it out, but it is one on one, not one to three. After several days, you can add the pair back.

Now sometimes, even when adding two on two, you get a pretty aggressive bird, if so, pull that one for a few days, and let the other trio settle down, then add the more aggressive bird back.

As I said, separating birds is hard!

 

[JadeFarms]

What I do is I would keep her in a smaller cage inside of the cage the others are in. They would not be able to hurt her through the cage most likely. When you feed, put feed right by her, they are most protective using feeding time, so having her around will show she is part of the flock.

Once she has been in there for about a week, or less, let her out. Make sure you supervise them, even if they don’t peck her, keep her in the cage in the same place for 2 to 3 more days. Then, supervise again, if nothing happens she should be fine! Keep checking on her as much as you can, if there is any plucked feathers or wounds, do this over again. Hope this works!!!

 

[drdvmd]

We let them free range most of the day yesterday and by the time they got back to the coop last night, they were all getting along again! Thanks for the support.