Chickens Are Jerks

It was a nice day today so we decided to experiment with reintroducing our picked on chick to the flock. We have learned a lot about chickens and one thing is for sure - they are kind of jerks!

 

It all started when we noticed one of our chickens was getting picked on......very badly, I mean blood bath bad. You can read more about that here. We separated her into a dog crate in the basement where we made her a little chicken "tiny house" for the time.  It has now been about a month and it is time to get her back out to the coop with her sisters since she is all healed up. But, once a chicken has been picked on and separated from the flock it is not easy to get them back. Outsiders are not easily welcomed back and since she was being picked on before it will be even harder. Time for some experimentation.

 

I gave "Bloody Mary" a pep talk, advised her on how to handle the situation, and decided to just put her out in an open space with the rest of the chickens and document what happens. Oh yeah, did I mentioned we have named her Bloody Mary, the kids thought Mary was a good name....Bloody Mary seems to perfect. Ok Mary ready to see daylight?

It was a nice day so I let the chickens out in the yard before bringing up Mary. I threw out some Kale from the aquaponics system and then brought up Mary (this probably was a bad idea as it brought them all together). She ran to the food and immediately the other chickens started to attack her! They were going for blood again and she ran for cover. Another one went after her chasing her around by the house, and another, and they were all looking for blood! Time for another approach! I rescued Mary and took her back to the relative safety of her tiny house. time for Plan B.........

To watch the video on Mary's introduction click here

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What To Do With a Picked on Chicken

What do you do when one of your chickens starts to get picked on? In every flock of chickens there is a pecking order and sometimes the weaker smaller birds will start to get bullied, mean old chickens. We have not had any issues with this until just recently when we started noticing a lot of feathers scattered around the run and coop.

I started to investigate a few days ago and witnessed one of the larger chickens chasing the smallest one around and literally pull its feathers right out! Not just one at a time but bunches at once. I hoped that it would just lay low and heal up and all would be well in the SSL flock. I could not have been more wrong, by the next day there were more feathers and more bald spots on the hen.

I was starting to get concerned especially since it is winter here in Michigan and temps were dropping into the teens at night. Each day I would check on the hen and see that it had bunkered down in one of the nesting boxes; basically hiding from the rest of the chickens. I tried to feed it some scraps of food and gave it water.

Last night I went out to put the chickens in for the night and I opened the box to check on it and noticed blood all over the tail and wings. It was time to do something to help this little egg producer.

After some research and based off of what I have seen once the flock draws blood they will not stop until the hen is dead. There is something about the look or smell of blood to them that makes it irresistible and they will actually eat the chicken alive basically. Now, I know what some of your are thinking, take it to get slaughtered or put it out of it's misery. Well, no, not going to happen here. Number one I live with 4 girls in this house and if I wanted to continue to sleep inside I don't think that is an option. Number 2, the meat is no good at this age and this chicken still has a year or two of egg production left so I want to save our investment. And, oh yeah, I don't like to see the little runt chicken suffering!

At this point the only thing you can do is separate the chicken from the flock in some way. In our case, the easiest thing to do is to bring it inside our basement or garage and let it heal up. I had and old dog crate that will work just perfectly. Since our garage is a mess right now the basement seems like the logical choice.

Is it weird that I now have a pet chicken in the house? The answer is, yes! But, it is nice to be able to go down and collect an egg without having to go out in the cold so there is that to think about. Maybe I should move the coop inside too! Don't tell my wife that I said that or seriously, it will happen.

I will give an update on this little hen down the road after a full recovery. My only further concern is will it happen again? I may have to separate the bullying chickens for awhile when I reintroduce this one but either way I will take you along and let you know how it turns out. Good luck to all you chicken owners out there and as always let me know if I can help anyone out there in anyway. Have a good one!

Check out the full video here

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