Damaged pin feathers?

[Sisterhood]

Damaged pin feathers?

Postby Sisterhood » 26 Aug 2013, 11:23
Hello there,

Just after some advice on an injury to our 20 week old Cream Legbar.

She had lost a couple of tail feathers recently, not sure why - although our speckledy hen is a bit of a bully and often pecks at the base of others' tails.
Yesterday we noticed some bleeding at the base of her tail and the others were pay her a lot of attention. We isolated her, cleaned her up, sprayed anti-peck stuff and veterinary powder (wound powder it's called). What we noticed when examining her was that the bleeding appeared to be coming from damaged new feathers growing to the replace the ones she's lost.

We are pretty new to chicken keeping, so this is all guess work for us - I've just read up on the blood / pin feathers, and it seems that she's got some damage to one two of these new feathers - I've read that it can bleed a lot and not clot easily, but her's were clotting okay and the bleeding stopped fairly quickly. She's certainly not bleeding noticeably at all today.

We've not kept her separate for the others - the anti-peck spray seems to have worked and she's not being pestered today. We're going to examine her again in a bit, but what we need to know is - Is there anything we should look out for? Any particular treatment we should use? Should we be isolating her anyway, even though the others are leaving her alone?

And also, what could have caused the damage in the first place? Is it quite common? Is it likely to be our bully-hen? And is there anything we can do to reduce her mindless pecking on others? They are all pretty young still, so will she just grow out of it?

Sorry for all the questions??!!? Any advice gratefully received!

Thanks
Sophie

 

[chrismahon]

Think about a Bumpa beak bit for your bully hen Sisterhood. Yes, new feathers are full of lovely succulent blood and a bully hen will eat them. A spray will have little deterrent at that stage. The alternative is to separate her. You could separate the victim, but being of a mild nature it will be extremely difficult to re-integrate her.

The bully will certainly not grow out of it. The next stage could be to peck flesh out.

 

[Sisterhood]

Thanks for the reply - We'll monitor the bully behaviour -
As we're new to hen keeping we're not sure what is 'normal pecking order' stuff and where it crosses over into bullying.

I'm not even convinced that the damaged was caused by her, as she's not showing any extra interest in Connie now that the bleeding has stopped. Perhaps Connie damaged the pin feathers during preening?

Anyway, all seems okay now - apart from the fact she hates us for handling her 3 times in two days, but her feathers are growing with no further damage and we've not seen any of the others target her for at least a couple of days.

Thanks for the advice!

Sophie