help me settle an argument

[bookwormom]

this is not the first time we have had chickens. in the past the hens would get a little bald spot on the back of their head where the rooster used his bill to keep from falling off (I guess). well, Our hens all have no feathers whatseover on their backs. totally naked, part of the wings, too. I feel so sorry for them. my husband insists that it is the rooster and that that is common. I say it was his dog who has killed several chickens when he played with them, he liked to rub his teeth across their back and scrape the feathers off. He did not kill them and eat them, he played them to death. my question, does your rooster/roosters leave the chickens without feathers on their back? I have put ointment on some as they are bloody. I am sure after not having feathers that the rooster does now hurt them.

[bee_pipes]

Yeah, sorry - it's the rooster. We have that problem too. My thinking is there aren't enough hens for the rooster. Right now our roosters have been separated from the hens. They get to visit one day every once in a while, but are being confined away from the hens for the most part. We kept two roosters, in case something happened to one of them. They are hating life right now. All the hens look exactly as you describe. I'm hoping their backs will fill back in when they moult.
http://i118.photobucket.com/albums/o120/bee_pipes/mating_behavior.jpg
Regards,
Pat

[bee_pipes]

Ten hens, eh? I've got seven. We just had a hatch and I was thinking about increasing the number of hens in hopes that would keep the rooster too busy to wear the feathers off any one hen. The rooster isn't 18 months yet; didn't realize the spurs would get bigger. Storey's said the spurs could be removed - cut them off the cockerels at 10 to 16 weeks old. They advocate all kinds of stuff - debeaking, etc. I think some of these methods are for industrial, high density chicken housing. We don't really subscribe to a lot of that - mutilating animals for our convenience. I understand there are safety issues with disbudding kids and lambs or detusking piglets, maybe docking spurs would fall under that category.

Chickens aren't with us very long. We try to give them a decent life while their with us. The chickens and turkeys free range all day, so far no problems with predators.

Storey's has all sorts of stuff in it that sounds absurd. Sometimes I think the author is somewhere laughing about it. Preparation-h for a prolapsed vent, vaseline on frost-bitten combs, and sewing together what can only be called a "chicken-cozy" to prevent feather loss from mating behavior. Right - like my hens are going to run around the property with little jumpers on. Sounds like a good way to find them hung in briar patches.

This is our first experience with raising chickens. The books help, ya gotta start somewhere. But there's no substitute for listening to neighbors that have been doing it all their lives. We lucked into a good breed, also.

Thanks Deb for the heads-up about continued spur growth.

Regards,
Pat

[WileyCoyote]

Don't know if this will help, but - when I was tiny, we visited a hatchery. They would catch the little roosters as chicks and flattened both the sharp ends of their beaks and remove the spurs. They used a bare metal wire suspended between two (I guess) electrodes that kept the wire red-hot, and would simply use the wire as a cutting device, removing both the spurs and the ends of the beaks in two very fast movements. This cauterized the ends and kept them from growing, and didn't seem to hurt the chicks much.

When I was much older, we always ate the young roosters first, and only kept one rooster with an average of 20 hens so he was kept pretty busy. That one rooster always had his spurs (we had a bad problem with coyotes, snakes, weasels, and wild dogs) but used them for attacking predators (and occasionally us!).