tweetzone86
Songster
This one unfortunately happens to be my eight year old daughter's favorite chicken to boot, but she's bullying the others and possibly feather-picking their tail feathers. Two got to blood and we sprayed Blue Kote on everyone who had bare spots on their butts by their tails, and it was about half of the new birds. Our roo is even afraid of her, though she hasn't feather-picked him.
We did have two SLW die, possibly from feather-picking on the tail (found both dead when the new flock wasn't yet with the old one, and both had wounds in the back), so we are keeping an eye out for a possible bully in the new flock as well, and have tagged two with all tail feathers intact as possible culprits with the Blue Kote on the necks to keep an eye on them. But my eldest just threw some older grapes that are starting to turn into the run in multiple areas and the old hen ran up from one where she was eating and twice plucked another near the back hard, and she has blue kote on her beak. Hence suspicion that she's one of the tail-pluckers.
We are not set up for keeping her permanently solo. We rehomed all 8 of her hatch-mates/old flock, but kept her because she's the 8 year old's favorite and tried dog kennel (open wire) integration, but it's been two weeks and she's still showing behavior issues (she was bottom of the order in old one and skinnier- now she's fat, huge and bossy. Even the roo won't challenge her, and he and the head of the old flock had hackles up and I had to break it up before they started fighting while we waited for adopter to arrive).
I can't bring myself to butcher her because it will devastate my 8 year old (she will have to learn eventually, because we plan on getting meat chicks when our house is done and we have more shed coops built, but now is not a good time to be thrust into it, not with her 2.5 years of partiality to this one).
Urgh...they're eating Purina Flock Raiser 20% plus oyster shell on the side. We expanded the run so it's much bigger, and actually locked the new flock outside so they would stop being wusses and actually go into the run, and so the coop is 12x8, and the run is probably at least 300 square feet. 19 birds total, counting old hen. Multiple feeders and waterers spread out, and I even picked up three flock blocks yesterday to try and alleviate feather-picking (as well as blue kote on bald spots at the tail on all the others, and we isolated the two bleeding ones til the blue kote helped stop the bleeding).
Help please?
We did have two SLW die, possibly from feather-picking on the tail (found both dead when the new flock wasn't yet with the old one, and both had wounds in the back), so we are keeping an eye out for a possible bully in the new flock as well, and have tagged two with all tail feathers intact as possible culprits with the Blue Kote on the necks to keep an eye on them. But my eldest just threw some older grapes that are starting to turn into the run in multiple areas and the old hen ran up from one where she was eating and twice plucked another near the back hard, and she has blue kote on her beak. Hence suspicion that she's one of the tail-pluckers.
We are not set up for keeping her permanently solo. We rehomed all 8 of her hatch-mates/old flock, but kept her because she's the 8 year old's favorite and tried dog kennel (open wire) integration, but it's been two weeks and she's still showing behavior issues (she was bottom of the order in old one and skinnier- now she's fat, huge and bossy. Even the roo won't challenge her, and he and the head of the old flock had hackles up and I had to break it up before they started fighting while we waited for adopter to arrive).
I can't bring myself to butcher her because it will devastate my 8 year old (she will have to learn eventually, because we plan on getting meat chicks when our house is done and we have more shed coops built, but now is not a good time to be thrust into it, not with her 2.5 years of partiality to this one).
Urgh...they're eating Purina Flock Raiser 20% plus oyster shell on the side. We expanded the run so it's much bigger, and actually locked the new flock outside so they would stop being wusses and actually go into the run, and so the coop is 12x8, and the run is probably at least 300 square feet. 19 birds total, counting old hen. Multiple feeders and waterers spread out, and I even picked up three flock blocks yesterday to try and alleviate feather-picking (as well as blue kote on bald spots at the tail on all the others, and we isolated the two bleeding ones til the blue kote helped stop the bleeding).
Help please?