Keeping Chickens Newsletter

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Took them all together in a large cage out to the enclosure. As usual, we left them in the cage for a couple of hours, in the shade so they could look/listen, and the others could look/listen.

Again, this method has never failed us.

Then, towards later afternoon, we opened the cage door and left it that way. This ''soft release'' allows them to come and go......if they want to.

I went out to check them, as usual, every three minutes (worried mom here) and all was well. The one young one has bloody tail feathers! I grabbed her up and brought her in, since I have heard horrible stories of ''once they see blood they keep on a pecking at it''.......and got her washed off, dried up, ''quick-stop'' on the area. I put her into a cage on the porch. After she was all seemingly okay, I put on ''anti-peck'' and some other stuff along the same line, for chickens, that is suppose to keep the chickens from going near that spot OR wanting to.

I put her back in w/the group. It wasn't a minute and her own cohorts were going after her tail again, AND she was bleeding again! She is back inside the porch now.

I did bring in her cohort (another same age leghorn gal pal) and the two have been happily staying safe and sound back on our porch. Getting spoiled rotten too:)"

6th July "On a fluke, chickie all healed, and doing very well with her leghorn cohort, I mucked and yucked the tail feathers with VICKS. The minor wounds were well healed.

I took her w/her cohort out, in a carrier. I observed for 99% of the day.......(leaving the carrier there, in case I had to pull them again). Had I had to pull them I would have returned them back at night, as suggested.
Again, it was not the oldest, nor the newer, but her very own lot she had been raised with, minus the leghorn I pulled out to be with her.

Well, lets just say, ONE COULD READ the minds of the two that went after her tail feathers, tasting the Vicks! Problem solved. Everyone is happy and involved again.

The one thing I did find a bit interesting: These little ones were only separated from the original ones (5 others) less than a week! Yet, back in w/the tribe, and although ''accepted'' by all, the two leghorns stay to themselves, rather than packing around with the ones they were raised with. HOW SOON THEY FORGET!"

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