Rooster losing feathers

[spies04]

Hi!

My hens are continually pulling the feathers around my roosters hind area. They are almost obsessed with it. He is a younger rooster and they are younger hens. None of my elderly even bother. It has gotten so bad that I have had to lock him up in a kennel at night and he is becoming paranoid

I have never seen anything like this. Any help would be much appreciated. I don't want his world to end up in a large dog kennel most of his time.

 

[gritsar]

There are products you can buy at most feedstores such as blu-kote, and I believe another one is called something like peck-no-more that will discourage the hens from pecking him. I prefer an old school product called pine tar. Pine tar is the most effective in my opinion - one peck and they will quickly decide to find something else to peck, but it is messy and would probably make a mess of his feathers in that area.

Good luck.

 

[ChickenMack]

Pull him out of the yard during the day and let him roost with the girls at night. They are just setting the pecking order- your roo is "hen-pecked"

Put him in a dog kennel or a seperate fenced area for a week or so during the day and your hens will find something else to do.

 

[Katydid2011]

I was having the same problem. The girls love their Roo but they outnumber him by 30 to 1 in that particular coop and his beautiful sickle feathers seem irresistible to the girls now that the weather has changed and they're not outside free ranging all day. Even though they're in a huge coop and there's no overcrowding they still tend to get after one another in a way that never happens in the dry seasons and it's the roo that has the most interesting feathers to pick at. I've taken to keeping him in a separate pen inside the coop during the day so they can't get to him. At night he goes onto the roost with the girls. If it's relatively dry, they free range together and leave one another alone.