Tail pickers How to stop this?

[Pork Pie]

Maybe changing from pellets to mash will help. Pellets are great in principle, but it reduces the amount of time that a chicken searches for / consumes food and can act to shorten the duration of their natural foraging / eating behaviour. Any environmental stressor that prevents / limits / shortens innate behaviour can sometimes result in displacement behaviour, such as feather pecking. If you do a bit of research on "natural / innate chicken behaviours" and then try to accommodate these, you may find a solution - it can be a bit hit and miss, but eventually, I'm sure you'll work things out.

 

[shortgrass]

I agree with Ken, to make a mash. Or better yet, ferment your feed. That way, you can assure that they are filling up on good nutrition before gorging on candy (corn). You can even make your own feed by using a "recipe" containing all their needed nutrients, and fermenting it will add in beneficial microbes to help them digest every little bit of nutrients out if it.

My birds get glossy feathers, clear eyes, just altogether look like sleek fat hens when I ferment. When I get lazy and give them dry feed, they literally look like they dried out too lol


And sure, mine get tons of scraps from the house. Leftovers, tops from veg from the garden, especially things like beet tops and leftover tomatoes and pumpkins etc. Thise things are absolutely good for them and can improve egg quality. Mine are scavengers for the most part. They get their needs met in their fermented breakfast, then scrounge all day in compost piles and the leftovers in the garden, then they get dinner and house leftovers at the end of the day. Maybe some corn if its going to be cold that night.

Mine are also molting right now. If your birds are a year old or more, they may be going through their seasonal molt. They'll lose feathers, tails will disappear and get brittle, and once in a while, you'll have a half naked chicken That's when I boost the protein by adding in alfalfa pellets for a dose of protein. Some use soybean but I grow alfalfa, so I use it

Boredom... I have those little hanging baskets and let my daughter's make them little chicken cakes for them with old buggy flour or bits of scraps, coconut oil, seeds, eggs that were too poopy to sell, maybe an apple, just whatever they feel like, and hang them on the fence in winter when there's no bugs to chase.

That or toss a ham bone in there and watch 30 birds play "keep away" with it for an hour. Instant boredom cure, a game of ham bone rugby