RIR questions

[stephanie984]

I have 17 week RIR hens. Recently one or two of the hens has started attacking the hind ends of the other hens. I wouldn't have gotten concerned about this except they have gotten a few of them quite bloody. Is this normal hen behavior? Should I seperate the attackers from the rest of the group?

Also, for the ones that are injured, how do you suggest I treat the wounds? I have never come across this type of hen behavior so I'm floundering a bit. Thanks for any advice!

Steph

 

[r-l-newell]

Quote:
I have 10 Rhode Island Red Hens and 2 Americaunas Hens and I have been having the same problems. if you have an extra swimming pool to put them in with some chicken wire or hardware cloth over the top of it to seperate the Victims kind of like a Hospital Ward and spray their effected area with a disinfectant/ointment that you can get from the same place you got your chickens from you should be in good shape. As to the attacker if you can identify and seperate them from the group I would do so and even though you may not want to you may have to cull her totally from the group and cook her as BBQ since she will probably continue to do it since she has already aquired the taste of blood.

I was able to catch the offender and place her into a seperate holding area and once she gets a little fatter and older I will be culling her but she is only three and a half weeks old and she already killed an Americauna of mine that she was raised with in the swimming pool brooder and she had no problems with up until being moved as a group into the full sized coop.

Hope this helps.