Some chicken pecking occurs in all flocks and is natural to maintain order (i.e. the pecking order). Usually, the pecking is minimal and no one chicken is damaged, but sometimes pecking can become a problem. Usually, problems occur when new chickens are introduced to a flock, because of overcrowded conditions, or from wintertime boredom when chickens spend the majority of their time inside the henhouse.
Now you can do your best to prevent pecking: introduce new chickens at night or in large groups, create a large enough chicken house or park (5-10 square feet per bird is recommended), and provide lots of entertainment for them in the way of food scraps, scratch, hanging veggies, chicken swings, etc. Despite all your best efforts sometimes pecking problems still occur. Now once a chicken is pecked and bleeding, for some reason, chickens just can’t stop pecking at the red, chickens can see color very well. They are attracted to the blood even if it is a tiny injury. And a tiny little wound soon can become a huge wound if not caught in time. So then the question arises, what should you do if a chicken is being pecked and is already injured?
Here’s a personal example of a pecking problem I’ve had and what I did. We had a cold spell, I live in Fairbanks, and by cold I mean 5 weeks of below -10F at my house. My chickens were profoundly unhappy. Even though I put my food and water outside in a covered section of the chicken park, forcing my chickens to spread out, and gave them lots of scratch and table scraps every day outside, they still decided they didn’t want to leave their chicken house, and inevitably somebody was pecked. Now I check my chickens twice a day, every day, their water freezes so I have to go out there to give them new water day and night, so I pay attention to my chickens. So I stroll out there one cold, evening and find this.
I panicked of course. Now usually people recommend isolating wounded or sick chickens. That’s great but I don’t own a barn or garage or anything other than my house. And although I’ve done it in the past I don’t really want to have a sick chicken in my too-small house while their wound heals up. So what was I to do? I grabbed my chicken, luckily it was in the chicken house at the time, and started wandering around my house with my chicken stuck under my arm. I needed something to stop the bleeding but also to cover up the red so the other chickens would stop pecking at it if I put it back in the chicken house. I’ve owned chickens for a long time now and I’m a bird biologist by training and have seen some weird naturally occurring injuries on birds, so I know how tough birds are. I knew I didn’t need to put an antibiotic cream or anything on my chicken and I certainly was not qualified to sew up a chicken. I knew that if only I could cover up the red long enough the wound would heal on its own.
Suddenly a little cartoon lightbulb went on above my head. What did I have in my house in plenty, was cheap, really good at absorbing and sticking to wet things, and looked like the natural color of chickens? The answer is flour of course. Just simple all-purpose flour. It stopped the bleeding, stuck to the wound, did not cause an infection, and the chickens never even noticed it was there. I dumped a bunch on the wound, blew off the excess and placed my chicken back in the house. I checked on her the next morning and she was fine. No more pecking.
I’ve tried the flour method several times now and it works like a charm. I’ve tried two ways of applying it. If you are lucky you can grab your chicken and just dump the flour on the chicken outside and blow off the excess. If that doesn’t work, sprinkle some scratch on the ground around your feet outside and wait for your injured chicken to come near. When she’s busy with her eating, dribble some flour onto the wound, hopefully, it’s on an easy access point like the back. For good measure dribble some on the other chickens too, it can’t hurt. I usually check again later that day and reapply if necessary or it’s been raining.
Thanks for this handy tip. I saw my Grandma do this years ago as a child…. only that she used corn flour. And it worked. Great to learn that all purpose flour too works.
Awww, cornmeal or cornflour is a good idea too. Thanks for sharing.