James Gibbon | When we bought chickens 🐓 this summer, we had no idea what we were getting into. We had no prior knowledge on chickens 🐔 and we have relied heavily on websites such as https://www.mypetchicken.com/, https://thefrugalchicken.com/, https://www.fresheggsdaily.com/, https://www.communitychickens.com/, and https://the-chicken-chick.com/ to get us through this process and keep the majority of our birds alive. We lost one of our birds due to disease, and the only other issue we were having was one of our hens was bullying one of our other hens.

This bullying started the first day we got the birds and it has continued ever since. The birds peck her tail feathers until she has none left. This had been going on for months and we started to notice Bea Hein (the bird without tail feathers) starting to lose weight. Immediately we realized that Bea Hein was lowest in the literal “pecking order” and we needed to do something about it. So we started giving her separate food and she was beginning to do better and gain some weight.

Then the unexpected happened. I opened the coop to find Bea Hein with blood on her foot. I was bummed to see her with blood on her foot, but didn’t think it was a big deal and figured her small cut would heal on its own. Man, was I wrong!!! It turns out chickens are attracted to blood and start attacking where the blood is - which I had no idea was even a thing! The next day I opened the coop to find Bea Hein covered in blood on her feet and tail.

After a couple google searches on https://www.backyardchickens.com , it became obvious that we needed to separate Bea Hein from the rest of the flock. So this is exactly what we did. We found an old dog 🐶cage and cleared out the greenhouse. The greenhouse would now become our second chicken coop. We got some straw and lined the dog cage with it.

We also cleared out the area around the greenhouse so she could roam throughout the day. Here she is nestled into some high grass outside the greenhouse.

Only after a few days of her being separated from the flock she is already looking 10x better. Unfortunately there are no guarantees her tail feathers will ever grow back, but she is looking much healthier. Her blood is gone since we cleaned her off with antiseptic (https://www.valleyvet.com/ct_detail.html?pgguid=d2f0533e-d65a-4532-ba27-0591a67c25d8&sfb=1&itemguid=30e08b64-7b6a-11d5-a192-00b0d0204ae5&utm_content=12265&ccd=IFM003&CAWELAID=120295250000089876&CATARGETID=120295250000473147&cadevice=c&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI7sHLqr6p5gIVKRitBh32wQ_aEAkYBiABEgIQ9PD_BwE). She is gaining weight and we are really excited about her return to the rest of the flock in the coming weeks!