Chickens are known to peck at each other, chickens pecking at each other is a normal thing for them. Unfortunately, this pecking can become fatal if overdone.
If you’re worried about your chickens pecking at each other, and are looking for home remedies for this issue, then this article is for you
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Home remedies for chicken pecking:
Chickens peck at each other for a variety of reasons, there is a pecking order among birds that results in the smallest and weakest birds being pecked when there are overcrowding issues, when there is a lack of food available or when boredom sets in.
Here are natural ways to keep your birds from pecking each other:
Keep them from becoming bored:
Chickens don’t like to be bored. If your birds become bored, they may start to peck at each other to relieve themselves of their boredom.
You can stop your birds from becoming bored and pecking at each other by offering them objects that they can peck at, this will keep them busy.
Keep them busy with simple items that you can find around the house. Items like a head of lettuce hung in an onion sack, logs or large branches can be placed in the bird’s coop, these items will excite the chickens and keep them from pecking.
Cool them off + Switch the lights off
Chickens can become irritable and start pecking at each other if they start to overheat or become exposed to too much light.
Keep this from happening by checking the coop’s temperature making sure that the birds don’t overheat.
Also, make sure that the bird’s lights aren’t kept on for too long, lights kept on for too long can cause the birds to become stressed, agitated, and aggressive, this will make them peck at each other.
Lack of nutrients
Malnourished chickens can become very desperate, if they feel the need to, they will peck at other birds in order to get some nutrients out of the other birds.
You can tackle this issue by offering your bird more nutrients in its diet, do this by giving the bird added proteins in the form of scrambled eggs (chicken or quail), mealworms, as well as sunflower seeds.
Give the birds more room:
One of the reasons why your birds may be pecking at each other may be that they don’t have enough room, a lack of space will cause them to peck at each other.
Giving the birds access to more space will stop them from pecking at each other and calm them down. If the birds are in a coop then letting them out is a simple and easy way to give them more room.
Isolate the sick birds:
You may not notice that a chicken is sick, but other members of the flock will.
Healthy members of the flock are not very friendly towards sick chickens, if a chicken in the wild is sick then the other flock members will drive the sick bird away, or, they will kill the sick bird out of fear of the sick bird being a liability for the rest of the flock.
Birds in captivity do the same.
If you’re noticing that one chicken is being picked on then you’d need to isolate the bird and treat it before putting it back with its flock mates.
Stop the bullies:
Sometimes stopping the bullying chickens in their tracks is necessary to stop them from pecking at other birds. This requires you to keep an eye on your flock to see which bird is a bully and stop it in its tracks.
Spraying the bully chicken, with water from a spray bottle, when she bullies the others may stop her in her tracks. Shaking a can filled with pebbles, when she pecks at the other birds, may help as well.
Isolate the bully:
If the bird bully isn’t getting the hint to stop bullying the others then you may have to keep her in isolation to lower her aggression levels.
To do this, remove her from the flock and keep her in a separate cage, make sure that the isolated bird and the rest of the flock can see each other.
Isolating her should calm her down and lower her aggression, keeping her isolated will also reset the pecking order, she will be at the bottom of the flock by the time she gets back. You can leave her isolated for 3-7 days.
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