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

[Cinnamon]

Indiana has very suddenly started picking on one of the littlest bantam girls, literally not letting her anywhere in the pen at all.

Luckily we have lots of perches & so forth, so she can keep herself out of trouble, & she has been able to eat & drink, but why the sudden meanness from Indy???

[craftyhunnypie]

How old is he Sarah? Perhaps he is meeting maturity or taken a shine to one lady particularly & is protecting her?

 

Emma.x

[Cinnamon]

Hmmm, he is about 2 I think.

 

He does have a favourite lady,but she is broody at the mo anyhow,so not even in the run

The little one he is picking on is the bottom of the pecking order anyhow & often gets a beakful taken out of her,but never from him before,who has always been quite protective of this girls.

[biddydog1]

I know this was an old post but I too have just encountered this problem with my two year old cockerel. He too has suddenly begun to exclude and peck the lowest bantam in the pecking order. Any ideas on solutions? this has been going on for about a week now.

[Chortle Chook]

Perhaps he wants to exclude any bird he sees as weak because in the wild, a weak member could 'endanger' the rest of the flock e.g. pass an infection. My cockerel was not too nice to my smallest Poland when she arrived. I was very firm with him and used to pick him up sternly and put him right out of the way up the other end of the garden so he couldn't get the treats whenever I caught him trying to exclude her from things. It could be that he is a bright boy and has learnt, or it could just be that she has matured and is more 'interesting' to him, but either way it has stopped and she is right in with the rest now.

[Random_Girl66]

Like biddydog1 I am adding to this old post as my pekin cockerel has started picking on one of the bantams girls that he shares his run with. He was fine, seemed happy with his two wives until they both went broody. He seems to have forgiven Boots (who is also a pekin) but Zanzibar (a bantam wyandotte) hasn't made it back into his good books yet. During the day there is the space for her to escape but early mornings they are restricted to the eglu run and usually when I go out to them he is chasing her around quite aggressively. She has lost quite few feathers off her back now although no blood that I have seen.

 

Not sure how to deal with it - it's been a couple of weeks with no improvement. I have considered trying to rehouse him in with big girls but that means separating him from Boots and they are usually inseparable.

 

Any thoughts

 

Thanks

[Chicken deficient]

My cockerel sometimes did a similar thing with the hen at the bottom of my flock's pecking order. He wasn't particularly violent towards her, but would shoo her off. I had a few theories about it, including that either she was a weird character that put everyone's backs out, or that he did it to keep her out of trouble and stop her from getting hassle from the others. He would particularly do it when I put corn down and she tried to get straight to it with the top hens.

 

However, he would always stop as soon as I said something to him and he now doesn't do it anymore. I talk to my chickens a lot and it is surprising how much they really listen. (I don't know how much is tone of voice and how much the actual words!)

[Chortle Chook]

My cockerel also seems to see broody, non egg laying girls as fairly 'useless' . Though he is not usually actually violent to them, one girly did lose her tail feathers to him but he got a very stern talking to and as per my post above was removed to the other end of the garden for a few hours. Since then he has left her alone (she is still broody )