What to do with bully chicken?

[Chicks Galore3]

I s'pose some of in you would say I should cull my bully chicken. She was a bully last winter too. My SLW is a MEANY, she'll pluck the feathers from the base of others' tails, sometimes eating them, sometimes not. She picks on one particular hen a lot. she ONLY does it in the winter. Why do you think she does this? I want to STOP it before the others catch on...like last year...which took forever to stop...there are some still recovering from last year...murmur, murmur, murmur. I recently switched to higher protein food. I hope that will help.

 

[donrae]

If it's more in winter/bad weather it makes me think it's a space/confinement issue, or diet related to molting. How much space do you have for how many birds?

 

[Chicks Galore3]

196' in the coop and 36' out in the run for 17 chickens and around 6 hours free range time most every day. (unless Mr. Hawk is around that day.) This is their first molt.

 

[Kelsie2290]

You might want to consider putting pinless peepers or bumpers on her if the diet change doesn't help. With the space/confinement, can you do anything to add some entertainment to their run, even though they are getting a lot of free range time. (ladders, perches, hay, leaves etc)

 

[Chicks Galore3]

Whenever I add shavings to the coop, I just dump them in the middle, throw some scratch in, and let the chickens have a hay day. I have some logs I can add, and it wouldn't be to hard to rig up some perches.