4m x 3m Omlet pen, cube, new auto door still boxed and coop light

[amandalou]

Hi all

 

We bought 4 miss pepperpots last april from omlet along with an eglu cube and all my life i had dreamt of having chickens,dream come true. The pecking order was established immedialtly Jennifer being top hen and poor blib' bottom! We bought 2 cream crested leg bars which were 16 weeks old in july. The atmosphere was horrendous for 4 weeks, went through the pecking, seperation, segregation stuff etc, finally introduced the legbars but they wouldn't go in the cube at nights and sat perching. As the weather got colder i physically had to put them in the cube every night myself, they now go in on their own,thankfully.

My problem is that Jennifer pecks the 3 other miss pepperpots constantly, so much that they have very few feathers on their bottom half, the 2 leg bars are completly unaffected.

I clean and scrub the eglu weekly and put red spider mite powder on them. We have 4 eggs most days from the 4 miss pepperpots but still havn't had 1 egg from the leg barrs.

I saw Jennifer today and the other pepperpots being so pecked by her, but also her making the other pepperpots peck blib' that i was so heart broken. The leg bars are unaffected,they have all their feathers and look glorious, as does jennifer.

I am a very pragmatic person, i have tried to understand the situation within chicken world,but it's so terrible to see this bullying and i feel that i am failing my chickens. I as along with many others on this site didn't realise how cruel survival is.I love all my chickens to bits.i can't stand bullying in any form from anything on this planet and it's really upsetting to see and watch.

Please can someone help with this horrible situation xxxx

[tom123]

Sounds like an odd situation

 

IMHO I would separate the BULLY and keep her separate for about a week then slowly re-introduce her. This should put her in bottom of the pecking order and hopefully she will not peck at the other 5.

 

Good Luck

Tom

[Redwing]

Would it be worth considering a bumper bit or ukadex (sp?)

[Ain't Nobody Here]

So sorry to hear you're having such awful bullying problems . I've no personal experience but there are loads of threads about bullying which may give you some useful advice . It might take a bit of time to read through all the posts but it may help you realise you're not alone!

[sugarspice]

i too have trouble with bullying. we have a mis pepperpot and a gingernut ranger, from the start the ranger was the dominant chicken. she pecked a patch at the base of the back below the tail feathers bare on the pepperpot.we tried the anti pek spray but it didnt work so we tried a bumper bit, it worked great for about 10 days then she got a strop on and decided she didnt want it on anymore, she stopped eating and just puffed up and sulked. so we caved in and took it off and within 2 minutes she pecked the pepperpot again. we gave her a 2nd chance and we watched her like a hawk for about another 2/3 weeks thinking that the bullying had stopped. then 1 day i spotted another bald patch on the pepperpots side, so we have refitted another bumper bit which is still on today. its been on about a week now. the trouble is she has now not laid for a week. it has now become a battle of wills but i dont want her bullying the pepperpot again.

 

i am looking to add 2 more chickens to our brood. im currently construting a walk in run which will be 13ft by 5 ft and 6ft high. so i will have a eglu run for sale if anyone is interested. the chickens will be in the walk in run for most days as they are making way too much mess in the garden

[Egluntyne]

Put a bumpa bit on the bully and if that doesn't work, segregate her for a week or more and when she goes back in, she will be bottom of the pile and might have learned some manners.

 

I believe that Gallina has some bumpa bits available.

[Chillicat]

Hi

I had a similar problem and within two weeks of my five girls being supplied by Omlet, one of my GNR's was pecked to death in the extended cube run. I was distraught and couldn't believe they could be so cruel . So, I let them out of the run and they had the entire garden to give them more space...........the garden is now wrecked

I was anxious to ensure that this truly horrid experience didn't happen again so after untold hours of being with them I could see that it was the PP's bullying the . .........buy WHY do they peck until they get right to the flesh? They had pecked not just a bald spot on her back by her tail feathers, but a bloomin' hole the size of a 50p piece.

I managed to save any further damage by using the purple spray on the wound (NAF care Aloe Vera Purple Spray) and plain old Bob Martins Anti Feather Peck Spray. Worked a treat! The purple spray healed the wound and the other stuff is clearly unpalatable There were 3 of us to keep on top of the situation over a weekend, but we saved our little chatty Treacle ( ), who now supplies us with the biggest eggs

More space will help as they find more to do and it will give the others a chance to get away from the bully. But if you have any wounds, you need to deal with them too. I would spray the lot of them.

Good luck.

[amandalou]

Thank you everyone for your help. I have ordered some stockholm tar and ukadex so hopefully this will work.