silkie hen being bullied

[alexkrass]

hi everyone. i recently lost 2 chickens ( a silkie and an aracauna), so the pecking order has greatly changed. my alpha hen, who is a silkie, is now picked on non stop. ive separated her and put her back in and the next day it starts all over again. its the dead of winter and no one is selling any other silkies. i also cannot bring her inside. i have tried and she is not a fan of living inside. i have toys everywhere for the other hens to play with but 2 out of my 8 hens will not leave her alone. my flock consists of standard size chickens and bantams. however, she is my last bantam so she is the smallest

 

[chippy99th]

This probably won't help but my only suggestion is to get a rooster.

I had the same problem, horrible bullying on my sweet Araucana girl after the pecking order changed. I honestly thought they were going to kill her. She'd stay up on the roost all day because they'd hurt her if she came down. I was trying all kinds of things, trying to fix the problem, when a young rooster got kicked out of the feral flock in our neighborhood by the boss rooster. The young one decided he'd come over to our yard.

Low and behold! The first time he saw bullying he put a stop to it then and there. As soon as I saw that I made sure to catch him and clip his wings so he couldn't change his mind! We've had that rooster for years, and also have a couple of his sons now, and they never let our 25+ ladies get too mean to each other.

I don't know if you live in an area where you can have a rooster, but if you can, that's what I'd recommend. Haven't had to worry about bullying at ALL since we've had our boy.