csteeps
In the Brooder
I'm in the UK and have a small flock of 10 ladies. We bought them as 'point of lay' in September with our first eggs from November. We currently get a full house of 10 eggs most days so I know they're healthy enough but we can't get a handle on why they are constantly plucking each other.
No hen is untouched but some are worse affected than others. We have a run which is now twice the required size after we increased it after they had started picking on one bird (a bluebell) before Christmas, where it was pecked and plucked until dripping blood. We isolated her alone until she'd scabbed over, then with her matching pair for a couple of weeks (we have 5 different pairs of breeds) and then reintroduced once healed and regrowing well. All seemed ok for a while but now we can't seem to work out the best way to deal with the whole flock doing it...
They have a large run which we can separate into 2 bits when needed, 2 feeders in different locations constantly with layers pellets available, they get plenty of mealworm treats to up their protein intake, we hang apples and broccoli for them to peck at, they have corn to scratch twice a day thrown in hay to make it last longer, they have perches, roosts, pecking block bucket, and a variety of different locations where they can go to escape the others but they just let each other pluck them and continue to hang out as a crowd...
We've just isolated our 2 Colombian blacktails as one has a large gash to go with the plucking now...
Although we have 5 different breeds they are all a similar shape and feather coverage when looking their best so nothing that's unusual which the others might be inquisitive about. Our other girls are speckledys, Sussex stars and copperblacks...
Can anyone make any suggestions.
I'll attach some pics of their run and the most recent injury.
No hen is untouched but some are worse affected than others. We have a run which is now twice the required size after we increased it after they had started picking on one bird (a bluebell) before Christmas, where it was pecked and plucked until dripping blood. We isolated her alone until she'd scabbed over, then with her matching pair for a couple of weeks (we have 5 different pairs of breeds) and then reintroduced once healed and regrowing well. All seemed ok for a while but now we can't seem to work out the best way to deal with the whole flock doing it...
They have a large run which we can separate into 2 bits when needed, 2 feeders in different locations constantly with layers pellets available, they get plenty of mealworm treats to up their protein intake, we hang apples and broccoli for them to peck at, they have corn to scratch twice a day thrown in hay to make it last longer, they have perches, roosts, pecking block bucket, and a variety of different locations where they can go to escape the others but they just let each other pluck them and continue to hang out as a crowd...
We've just isolated our 2 Colombian blacktails as one has a large gash to go with the plucking now...
Although we have 5 different breeds they are all a similar shape and feather coverage when looking their best so nothing that's unusual which the others might be inquisitive about. Our other girls are speckledys, Sussex stars and copperblacks...
Can anyone make any suggestions.
I'll attach some pics of their run and the most recent injury.
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