Aggressive (Abusive) Young Hen (Well, It's a Rooster!)

One of those cute chicks we got back in April has turned into an aggressive feather-pulling little terror. (This would be 'Tiffany' the Whiting True-Blue, by the way.) All the chicks (now three and a half months old) are five miles away in my mother's coop. My mother says we have to take this one back and raise her alone here, or she will have to be harvested for the soup pot! (Apparently one of the Polish chicks has a medieval tonsure now...)

Can a young hen be retrained and made nice, or is she just doomed?

The issue is distance. If she was on your land, close to the house, I would try the water gun system. A not too aggressive water pistol. You wander around their coop pretending to be doing things, but actually keeping an eye on Tiffany. Every time you see her doing something nasty, you squirt her. Ideally near the face/head. Chickens don't much like this, but they aren't actually killed by water. If you had the time to spend 2-4 mornings at your Mother's, you could crate her the rest of the time. The combo might work.

Alternatively, you could re-home her, but be clear that she's been a problem and may need intervention while integrating. Normally, integrating a single hen is a bad idea as they likely will get attacked by the "home" hen team. However, I did this with an aggressive hen - gave it to a neighbour who has a different set up than we do. He dropped her into the group, she challenged the matriarch, the matriarch beat her up enough that she decided to behave herself.

It definitely needs to be dealt with. It's not fair to the other well-behaved hens to have to put up with inappropriate aggression. It's too stressful for the rest of the team.

Hi Rachel,
I'm sorry to hear one of your hens is picking on the others. I will preface this with the fact that I believe chickens are individuals and some of them can simply be jerks. Having said that, here are a couple things to keep in mind.

I hear high occurrences of smaller chickens with poofy feathers (like polish and silky) getting picked on. It is just anecdotal. but I have seen fewer issues with flocks that are all the same breed. It is fun to have a mixed flock and see the variety, but in my limited experience it does increase the likelihood of a jerk chicken acting out.

Also, behavior problems in general can be related to stress or boredom. Having too small of a pen for the number of chickens can increase the likelihood of fighting or misbehaving. Having a pen with too little in it, or too little to do (scratch, chase bugs, etc) will increase the time they have to fight with each other. If they are busy scratching and eating and foraging they have less time and less energy to misbehave. If they get all their food delivered in a nice dish that they can consume in 30 minutes... what are they going to do with the rest of the day? Especially if they are in a coop and run situation. Just some things I have noticed with my flock and a couple others. I don't know the setup at your mother's house, but giving them more space, or at least more things to hide behind and get out of the line of sight might help.

Great comments from Jay -- I never quite considered it. But realizing you aren't the "biggest dog on the block" you thought you were makes sense.

I'm not a flock chicken expert, but I vaguely recall my parents trimming back the top beak of problem chickens so they could eat well but couldn't pull feathers. No idea if that applies here.

Maybe she is actually a rooster?

Here are some threads:

https://permies.com/t/49082/hen-rooster

https://permies.com/t/62485/Hen-turned-rooster

I too have heard of polish chickens getting picked on by non-polish chickens. I'd personally be interested to see how they would do with chickens that are more alike to her.

Thanks so much everybody! I appreciate your insight and ideas and experience. I will update this thread once we try some things and see what works.

I get where your mom is coming from! We have a "No A**holes" policy strictly enforced at our farm. Mean animals, uncooperative animals, fence jumpers...life's too short for me to invest in them when there are so many we get along with. There's always miraculous turn around stories too, but sometimes those traits get passed on, taught to other livestock, or cause injury.

Tiffany is now named "Biff" as my mother noticed that it walked like a rooster and today talked liked a rooster--she watched it crow. Siggggghhhhhh...that one was not the mystery chick--that one they really thought was female. (It was our one blue-egg layer waaaaaaah!) Now, we have to figure out what we are going to do with him...

First off, are you even allowed roosters? If you want self-replicating chickens, they are essential.

Secondly, roosters not raised by "real moms" do sometimes have aggressive tendencies. It may take a lot of handling and training to manage him.

Third, if your girls go "broody", getting them fertile eggs from elsewhere may not be too hard, and they will raise you a rooster that has manners.

Forth, he'll taste just fine. I have a mom raising 16 chicks right now, a second who may have blown it as I'm not seeing pipping and she's due, and a 3rd that just got started late yesterday. There are bound to be roosters, and I don't need any. I've processed them before and it is time-consuming and they tend to be on the small size, but they are way better than grocery store chicken!