Chickens will also peck at each other from boredom. One of the reasons why chickens peck at each other is because of the natural texture and appearance of some of their features like feathers. Some more items to examine are: nutrition, overcrowding, broody hens will peck, too much light, and overheating.
You may be thinking “Why do chickens pick at each other?”
Boredom is probably the number one cause of chickens picking at each other. Once chickens see blood they will continue to peck the other chicken in the bloody area, causing more blood and damage. Any bloody area whether it be from another chicken pecking it, pulling a feather out or injury, can cause this to start.
Let’s start from the base, pecking is also known as picking and when a chicken pecks or pulls the feather of another chicken, then it is known as feather pecking. However, mild pecking is considered normal, there’s no problem in that but heavy feather pecking can injure the skin of the chicken.
Another inquiry we ran across in our research was “Do chickens pluck out each others feathers and why?”.
Pecking, also called picking, is almost always the result of high stress levels. When that happens, the birds will sometimes pluck each others’ feathers out, and can really hurt one another. Here, feathers have started to re-grow on a bare back.
Why do chickens eat their feathers?
Feathers are made of protein, so if a bird is suffering from a protein deficiency they can turn to feather pecking and eating the feathers as a source for much-needed protein. Making sure that your hens have a good, balanced diet, in particular, a quality layers pellet as their staple feed will help keep this to a minimum.
Chickens do lose their feathers for a variety of different reasons. Cannibalism is another area to look into if your chickens appear to be eating and/or losing feathers.
Why are my chickens pecking tail feathers?
Some of the biggest things that can cause stress are: Lack of food or water, excessive handling, loud noises, infestations Temperature too high or too low, and bright lights.
Stress is also sometimes a reason for aggressive feather pecking. A chicken coop that is too hot will stress the birds, try to increase the ventilation to cure this problem. If you have too many hens in one hen house or poultry run, the lack of space will stress them. Can you reduce the overcrowding?