Chicken brutality

So one of my hens is being picked on unforgivingly. I have given her some space, that just seems to have made it worse. The rest of the flock have pecked at her to the point that she fled. I now have her in my greenhouse and honestly I would rather cull or release the rest of the flock than give up on her. I don't think that I can be kind or care about the rest of them at this point. Does anyone else have this kind of experience with their livestock?

Hi Stacy,
Is the chicken physically hurt? Missing feathers or bloody? Is she able to still get food and water?

Chickens do have their "pecking order", and someone will always be at the bottom. If you remove that chicken, another will become the bottom. Making sure they have plenty of room and plenty of distractions can help.

I have not seen your chickens of course, so I don't know how "brutal" they are being, so take this with a grain of salt. If the chicken is physically fine as far as wounds are concerned and is still healthy and able to get food and water, I would chalk it up to the pecking order. If it is more serious, then you may need to separate them for longer until you can determine the cause. Some chickens can be jerks, so that is always a possibility, but it is not usually the whole flock being jerks.

Another possibility that I have heard of, that makes sense to me, but I have no scientific basis for... is that sometimes if an animal is sick, the group will try to get rid of that animal at all costs to keep the rest of the group healthy. Sometimes it is just driven off, but sometimes it is even killed. Animals in general, but especially birds, will hide sickness as much as possible for as long as possible. Just a thought.

Hi Matt, thanks for the response. They have pecked her bloody and are not letting her drink or eat. I have separated her at this point. Unfortunately I am going out of town for the weekend and my kid will be watching everything. I'm going to let her wounds recover but I'm not sure how to reintroduce her to the flock when that is done. Or if I'm now going to have to keep apart indefinitely.

Hi Stacy,
If she is that bad, then I would try to keep her separated for long enough to "forget" that she was part of the flock, and be completely healed. Open wounds can trigger chickens.

Reintroducing the chicken at night after the chickens are in bed is one of the best ways I know to introduce new members to a flock. Also, planning to do it when there is a distraction first thing in the morning is good. If they get moved around, do it just when they get moved to a new spot. Then the chickens are busy finding bugs and checking out the new area, and are less likely to bother each other. Or if they are stationary, try dropping a big pile of fall leaves in, or a bunch of scratch grain, or wood chips, or squash, or a bale of straw with the twine cute off... or really anything that keeps them busy. In that way, chickens are just like people. If they are busy, they are less likely to get into trouble :)

I like Matt's suggestion of distractions, a sort of boredom buster.

Make a chicken pinata out of round fruit or vegetables:



other ideas






https://www.thehappychickencoop.com/chicken-bullying/

If those other suggestions don't work, and when you try to reintegrate her to the flock they go right back to picking on her you'll want to find a new home for either the picked on or the rest of the flock.  If it's just one or two that won't leave her along you could consider culling them, but if it's the whole flock it's a matter of picking a side to keep and rehoming or culling the other side.  

I'm a big advocate of breed (or keep around) the best and eat (or rehome) the rest.  However, "best" is a subjective criteria you can decide upon for yourself.  Since you're not breeding or otherwise keeping for commercial purposes what is "best" for you might be "worst" for someone more production minded.  

I’d cull the one getting picked on, the rest probably will just pick up where they left off when you stick it back in there.

Hey Stacy, I really feel you on this.
My first chicken was rescued from a simular situation.
She looked like a walking corpes.
The friends who had her had too many chickens in a very bare yard.
They had bought new birds before culling the old ones, and then found they were not able to perform the culling.
She was a the bottom of the pecking order, but the other one we got had been injured and that was enough to make her a target of the flock.

They blossomed into full-bodied beautiful birds, and in the flock they founded, they have been dominate jerks to newer birds!
One of them still lives, and is currently being jerky to our two newest hens.
In the interim we have introduced and removed a pair of black orpingtons that were perfectly well mannered.
Their only flaw was being bigger than Queen Ann(our top girl) .
She jumped them and got her but kicked!
She was never ok with this, and would try to reassert herself,  to disastrous ends.
Eventually we realized her wellbeing was more important to us than allowing nature to play itself out and we re-homed the black orpingtons.


All of this to say, you have every reason to be upset, but please try not to hold the nature of chickens against them.
The advice on distractions is good, and the advice on removal till they forget her is even better.

This happens - chickens can be quite nasty:

1. The most common reason I see is that the bird in question in fact is not well and since when the flock "tries to chase the sick chicken away" she has no "away" to escape to, she gets injured. Some illnesses are quite hard to spot, but check her for lice/mites and particularly for wasting disease and see how she does separated.

2. Another common reason is that the bird is getting a little prolapsed when she lays and that's also an open invitation to pecking. Extra magnesium may help that, but step one is to even see if she's still laying.

3. Sometimes, there's a bully in the crowd and others follow that example. All you can do is watch the flock and see if 90% of the time, it's the same bird starting the trouble. Have a super soaker with you, and shoot the bully in question with a decent spray of water and you might teach her to stop!

4. This is a good example of why it's good to have extra infrastructure. We have ducks and we regularly end up with a Miss Dickens or 3 - a "chicken" that lives with ducks" is a Dicken! Our most recent Dicken was from #2 above - she's healed up, and we think she's laying once every 3-4 days, but those darn chickens don't engrave their eggs with their name!

5. Reintroductions are hard, and I agree with all the suggestions Matt makes and the need to have distractions for the whole flock when doing so. That said, I'd also be prepared to yank her back out and try again the next night, and again, for several tries. If a chicken takes on too much of the "cower in fear" role, you will need to find another alternative longer term, but cross that road when you get to it, and during the introductory trials, try to see if there's a bully instigator. This is important because you may find that with the current target out in sick-bay, the bully will target someone else. The difference between "the top of the pecking order" and a "bully" is subtle but I've seen it, and the last thing I need to do then is keep removing injured chickens!

6. Is having a "sub-flock" something you can do? There are times when that can be useful to have, particularly if you occasionally have to refresh your flock from off-site.