Harrietshens Posted February 1, 2012 Share Posted February 1, 2012 The other morning when I let our girls into the run I thought to myself how glossy and feathery they all were after going through various stages of moult at the end of last year. No bald patches anywhere! Shortly afterwards I spotted Layla pulling feathers from the front of the neck of Geraldine. This didn't appear to be aggressive in any way - Geraldine seemed to be enjoying it and made no effort to get away. Queueing up behind Geraldine was Miranda, and when Geraldine eventually moved away Layla began doing exactly the same to her. By the time I'd got my shoes on and dashed out to the run, both Miranda and Geraldine had rectangular bald patches on the front of their necks in exactly the same places. As I said, this didn't look at all like aggressive feather pecking and I wondered if there was a reason for it. I've since sprayed the necks of all the hens with anti-pecking spray but haven't seen a repeat of this behaviour. Layla is one of the more dominant hens. Were the others just being submissive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
poppers77 Posted February 3, 2012 Share Posted February 3, 2012 We had the same problem when it snowed flo started on gwinnie and in the end she looked like a transalvanian naked neck ! Ooh she did look awful. She kept trying to re feather then we had an attack of lice. We tried pretty much everything and in the end a vet visit, bumpa bit for flo and then onlyafter their first moult was gwinnie fully restored. Never seemed to bother her though, laid the best and like yours sat their submiisively whilst she was pecked. No blood was ever drawn. I do use orego-stim and life long layer regularly now though and all is so far so good. Best of luck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
