Hello all! I am a bit desperate trying to solve my chicken problem. I have four chickens and one of them, Fancy Francie, has a very aggressive nature currently taking out aggression on one particular chicken, a Polish named Susan. Due to months of pecking, Susan is missing most of the feathers on her head. A week ago, the Fancy Francie began plucking out feathers around Susan's rear to the point that the other two chickens fly the coop and Susan drips blood. The local feed store recommended placing a gooey substance (I forget the name) on Susan's pecked parts. This works for a little while but soon Fancy Francie is back pecking at her. Susan now roosts away from the rest of the chickens.
Any thoughts on how I can prevent Fancy Francie from pecking Susan to bits?
Thanks for any advice or thoughts!
Pecking and bloody
I had one that got picked on like that too. I finally seperated her from the others and let her heal up. Once she was healed, they didn't pick her bloody any more. Seems that if one shows any injury, the rest will always pick at it, they love foods that are red, tomatoes, watermelon, etc. Chickens are also canabals if given a chance.
I too had a hen that was picked on non stop.I took the her out and placed her in her own little pen for a couple of weeks out of sight of the others.I then placed her back in with the others at night time and the next day she was ignored and life was much better for her.I think she was given a higher ranking in the squad.
One thing I have heard works to stop the pecking before it gets to that extreame....
Listerine sprayed on the feathers,the yucky listerine,not the citrus or new flavors
Haven't tried it yet,supposedly they hate the taste
plus its an antiseptic
When mine show signs of pecking I hang a head of romaine or swiss chard ....it keeps them occupied jumping and grabbing and they forget about pecking the poor victim
We do the same w/ lettuce, or an old bale of straw, or a bag of fall leaves, or a halved pumpkin.
Yeah, I throw in a few apples every day when it is winter to head off this issue when they are cooped up. the apples roll around and make moving targets :)
or a pine branch ( not hemlock!) They'll strip it of needles and bark in a day. yum yum.
sorry about the chickie!
Thank you for the ideas for putting something in with the chickens to ]
peck at. Half a pumpkin sounds great! We can always find a pumpkin
around here, and they are relatively cheap.
Pine branches? Neato. Will try.
apples here are expensive (we have 50 big chickens)
I also like hanging the head of swiss chard or something. Maybe
our Horrocks food store would have some for less expensive
during the winter months.
Any other great ideas for keeping the girls occupied during the
long winter months? They have trouble knitting and crocheting.
they are terrible cooks. Some can draw, but the others get
jealous and rip the paper up. They only like to use the red
crayons too. : )))))
Music might be good for them. I can see hanging something.
Like a giant suet ball maybe? It would be frozen like a rock
outside in their coop, so that might be a distractor for them.
I refuse to put in a telly for them.
sheri
An old log is usually full of treasures. We keep a "burn pile" in the chicken yard for them to roost on and in. It keeps them busy.
Don't give them a TV! Then they'll want the itsy bitsy spiderman and you'll never hear the end of it.
I swear they gear those commercials toward chickens.
;p
bascially I throw in all my bread, veggies, fruit, etc and let them at it. They like gourds and stuff too.
I tried to feed them all my broccoli when the DH wasn't looking, but the girls wouldn't eat it either! ( smart girls!) so I got caught :)
They like strawberries and are mad over grapes
Do you have a dry sandy spot for them to dust in? We had this problem and found out that what was going on were the chickens were literally plucking lice from the other chickens. They need a dust bath to fromp in.
I bet listerine sprayed on their sore behinds would hurrrrrrrrrrttttttttt youch.
Is there really a town called Somewhere over the Rainbow, KY?
I went to school in New Mexico and couldt get over the town called
Truth or Consequences, named after the show because one of the
townspeople went on that show. I went to school in Socorro.
I trapped a human man today at Tractor Supply company. I saw he
was just there to buy some chicken food, so naturally I stopped to
ask him questions. And more questions. It turns out he was a 4H
leader for many years, of chickens, and pigs and other neato
things.
Re: Pecking: One of the chickens he said will always be the
pecked, and the others the peckers. I think you might want to
seperate them till she heals up a bit. Didn't people just put
on bacon grease on animal sores till they healed up? this way,
if they licked it they didnt get ill, and since it was a little salty,
it helped with healing. I would also try the Foxfire books.
He said also, this time of the year is terrible for pecking.
They know winter is coming and want to get more food and
they get really pecky. He suggested a light, not a bright light
left on a timer, and that will allow them to eat all night and
relieve some of the tension they are feeling.
Thats about all I can remember that I asked him about
your pecked chicken.
Our girls make so many dust baths, its like a mine field here.
I used to have chicken dust for my old ones, it was diamacious
earth? I left it in a box for them and they would fluff in there and
the diamacious earth was sharp flinty but microscopic in size,
and that killed any bug on their skin, but was non chemical.
I am working on a web page for the first time ever.
I found freewebs.com and started one for wigglypaw.
its hard!!!! takes tons of time and effort to make a
web page. I try to do an hour a day. One of the gals here at DG
has a beautiful web site and when I checked it out, it was at
freewebs. I can put pix and stories of my chickens there. : ))))
I just discovered that one of DG rules is not to post your own
web site address, so before i got into trouble, i decided to
remove the address. : )))))) I hate getting into trouble!
and mostly its my own foot in my mouth that does it.
Regards to all
sheri
This message was edited Nov 7, 2006 4:04 PM
Yes, he is right. There is the thing called the "pecking order"... and it is usually the weakest or smallest of chickens.
True, but it doesn't have to be a big bloddy mess. I have a mixed flock, and one of the silkies is always at the bottom, but since she is so small, they don't even bother beating her up :) SHe knows her place. I wonder if part of the problem is when the pecking order is really close, everyone feels like they need to keep pecking to make sure they stay where they are?
Don't know, but I think it's more often if one chicken is a problem (either a bully, or weak and sick) or if they don't have enough space and fresh forage. Agree that the pecking order should not result in serious bleeding and injury.
Right. My mother has the problem that now that pecking like that has started, they all learned to do it. The original peckers and peckees have died, but the new generation learned the bad habit from them. Francie, what's the update?
I have an old farm dude that does hanyman work for me... I have that pecking problem and he solved it....which I need to do again for this group (49 chickens and 3 turkeys). He says the pecking starts with mites which someone else said above. The solution is to dust the chickens and cage area with sevin dust. It worked for us.
My feed store said to clip the beak of the mean chicken. My hubby doesn't like the idea but I hate the bloody butts.
I've heard if it comes to that then use a dremel to do it
Oh goodness. I had a mean little hen that would peck at the other girls bottoms when they were trying to lay eggs. I kept seeing blood on the eggs and I finally caught her at it. She was an ornery stinker..........and mean.
I thought clipping her beak would be a good thing....................until I did it. ! ! ! I just used a large toenail clippers and took off the sharp tip. I felt so bad after I did it. It bled horribly !!!!
Seems there is a lot of bloodflow in that beak tip. She kept bleeding for a couple of days. I felt so guilty and sorry I'd done it. But she did finally get better. And it didn't seem to stop her from eating and pecking normally. But it didn't stop her from being a bully either, so it was all for naught. Finally I just got rid of her. Some days you just shake your head and sigh, and know you tried.
we are having bad pecking problems here. i read somewhere that pecking is also an inherited habit, and we want to hatch out chicks this spring. so, we are putting a camera in the henhouse, and i am going to dfidn out which ones are the worst instigators. at the least, they won't have babies, and perhaps next time someone wants to buy a hen, the pecker will be the first to go.
loved all these suggestions! gotta let someone else use this computer now...
tf
It is also something that is a learned habit spread from generation to generation. We've seen that in my mother's flock. the original pecking hens are long dead, but they taught the others to do it before they died. So, you may want to weed out as many peckers as possible before the chicks come.
The chicks will peck each other if there too close quarters hatcheries use red lights that calms them down. Quail are bad for that too. They will kill the weaker ones. If there is something wrong with one the others sence it and will kill it.