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hennymom

passing on our experience some of you may be interested

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we have had an experience today... not pleasant but we asked and took a lot of advice as to what to do in this situation and this may help...we had our hens at 3 weeks old, we sifted through a lot of breeders etc to get them and travelled 400 miles to get what we wanted!

Our girls got on fine, no problems until about 4/5 weeks ago, then suddenly one poor little girl started to get bullied.... nothing changed, (I don't think),but she got picked on relentlessly..anyway we asked advice, we took advice... then we were told about bumper bits...and we thought EUREKA! we found out where the supply came from...keeping a close eye on the bullies in the meantime... we sent off for our bumper bits and thought we'd keep them close to hand as things had settled slightly...anyway we have had some bother again this week and I decided to try out a bumper bit...so here we go...after soaking the plastic bit in boiling water for a few minutes to soften it we brought the offending lady up to the house wrapped in a towel so as not to frighten her, stroked her and calmed her and she was quiet while we placed the bit into her beak.... brilliant we thought , she is calm and breathing and seems happy with the bit maybe... she'll leave off bullying the other little girl now................ however I stepped into the run with her and placed her on the run floor, and the other 5 girls must have thought she had a worm or something in her beak and flew at her...............no mercy here guys, they pecked and chased.....chased and pecked till all 5 were pecking at the poor girls head..................I was gutted, I had to chase the girls away so I could pick up the girl with the bit on....she was bleeding from her beak area and top of of her face where they had all pecked at her trying to get the bumper bit off.............................. noe we have had to take the bit off with a pair of pliers ..it was snug.. she has been sprayed with antiseptic, cuddled better and put back in with the others.... I wanted the bullying to stop not to increase by 100 fold... I will now try anti peck spray, as I don;t really want a repitition again, she feels very sorry for herself today, I don;t blame her but I don;t believe in an eye for an eye, even I could not watch her being pecked to death for the sake of a bumper bit... the reason I posted this is to make other hen owners aware of the consequences sometimes, we were given good advice and followed it to the letter but to no avail...

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oh no :(

 

we have used bumper bits before and had no problems, but we did put them on all of them at the same time (well, give or take a few hours)

 

ours still peck / get pecked

 

we have got some rather smelly stuff now (we havent had the courage to use it yet :? )

 

I hope things settle down

 

cathy

x

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