concern over chicken

[hawthorns]

we have a miss pepperot and a gingernut ranger. the gingernut has always been the dominant chicken since we got the pair. she has plucked feathers from the pepperpot from day 1. today i have noticed a bare patch on the skin on the base of her back, its about 1.5 inches by 1 inch and blood spotted. i can see no infection or mites, lice etc. is there anything i can do for her. her health and wellbeing are as before she is eating and drinking and free ranging no bother

[Flummery]

Try and get some gentian violet spray - you should be able to get it from a farm suppliers, horsey type shop or even where you get your chicken supplies from. If you spray it on it will help. It disguises the blood - hens are attracted to the colour and will continue to peck once they draw blood. It is also antiseptic so it helps with the healing.

[Suechooks]

we have a miss pepperot and a gingernut ranger. the gingernut has always been the dominant chicken since we got the pair. she has plucked feathers from the pepperpot from day 1. today i have noticed a bare patch on the skin on the base of her back, its about 1.5 inches by 1 inch and blood spotted. i can see no infection or mites, lice etc. is there anything i can do for her. her health and wellbeing are as before she is eating and drinking and free ranging no bother

If you can't get Gentian Violet you could try Stockholm tar also from horsey places. Its as revolting as it sounds but definitely deters pecking! I used it on one hen who was oersistently pecked and since then no one gets feather pecked! You need to wear rubber gloves to put it on! The other option maybe after the feathers are back is Anti-peck spray from pet shops as this will deter the other one from getting going after your deterrent wears off and is colourless. Could also be worse as she may be moulting so losing feathers anyway. Either way the sprays should help

[hawthorns]

thanks for the advice. i dont think its moulting as she only young and not laid an egg yet

[hawthorns]

i managed to spray the featherless area with spray from the vets so hope it will heal nice and quickly. once the feathers start to grow back im going to try and use an anti peck spray has anyone had joy with this or ukadex to stop the bullying

[Suechooks]

Yes I've used the anti-peck spray. I bought a second one which has never been used so i guess it works! My ex-batts used to just sit around pulling each others feathers out when I first got them hence using the spray initially. On the odd one that gets bullied it puts them off as they don't like the taste. Its also used for parrots who pull out their own feathers when stressed.

[Hashette]

We had the same with our bottom-of-the-pecking order ex-bat, Lady Tottington. I sprayed the red bits with gentian, and then sprayed her all over with some anti-peck stuff called Ukadex. Be warned though, the anti-peck stuff stinks to high heaven and still hasn't come out of the top I was wearing after four washes.

Still, it's a good way of getting to the front of the queue in Tescos