canabilism

I had some older chicks in with chicks that are a week and a half younger than them and then a trio of bantam cochins. The cochins and older chicks have all of a sudden started to canabalize the younger chicks. What causes this? They were fine this morning, went out around 4 o'clock and found the carcass of a chick with all it's innards gone. I have since removed the cochins and the last of the 3 older chicks, but am afraid that the younger ones will continue picking each other off. I had to place a different pair of bantams in with them, but hey are smaller and not nearly as agressive as I don't have enough pens for everyone seperate.

Smokey that is what I HATE about chickens, they are nasty creatures.
I have never had luck introducing new birds to a pen until all the birds are close to the same size, or unless they are raised together. I have sucessfully added chicks to a brooder up to 2 weeks, after that point the older chicks just cause trouble.
Once a chick is pecked they all gang up on them, and can kill them pretty quickly.
When I was getting ready to go to Red Deer I had some Ameraucana pullets left I wanted to keep so I put them in with my other birds that are older but around the same size, and I added in the 5 pullets in the dark as I usually do. The next day I was getting ready to go and went to feed that pen, well all 5 were pecked raw on the hind end, so they had to go into a hospital cage while we were away. They are finally healed up and ready to go out into the world again, just need to find a safer way to introduce them I guess...
The best thing to do is put flour on the wound I found, it takes the red color away and clots any blood that might be there. If they do continue to pick you will have to remove the injured chicks or they will all start to go after one another.

My white turkeys were terrible, so terrible that I will never order them again. 'No-Pick' is your friend

I actually think it was my banti cochins that caused the grief, because all of the chicks were together and doing fine, and then I added the trio of cochins to the mix and canabalism started. I was sooo upset. I am thinking it was maybe the roo as he is quite agressive, but don't really know for sure. They are now in a pen by themselves as a trio again, but it is very frustrating not being able to put them in with any other chickens. The roo would fight to the death with the other roosters, so I can't put him in the pen which has close to 20 chickens and only 1 rooster.

Hey Smoky,

Did you have them side by side for a week or two, divided by a wire divider where they can see each other, before integrating? I've only integrated chicks twice before (2-3 weeks apart in age) with great success and at the moment have 3 week old birds (that include cochin bantams) and I just set up another brooder with freshly hatched chicks right beside them (as in the past) with 1/4 inch hard cloth between them. In a week or two I will remove the divider. So far, it's been very successful. Hopefully this one will be too.

Sorry to hear about the upsetting outcome for you. I would be really upset too.

And Hidden, thanks for the white flour tip. I was gearing up to put penaten cream on a young newborn with a bit of a herniated belly button before I put it in with the other newborns. I love the idea of flour as another option and to help stop the bleeding.

They had been in the same building, but within 2 different pens. My cochins are an older pair. Since removing the cochins and the 2 of the bigger oldest chicks that were left in that pen, I have had no more incidents. The 2 ages of chicks have been together for a few months and then started this when I added the cochins. It is frustrating, because now I have to build another 3 pens instead of only 2 as I have chicks that need to go outside also, but donot have the pen I had hoped to use for them! I guess the most frustrating is they killed my birchen cochin, and one of my 3 remaining frizzles that my dog had not killed.

I have found that any bird in a small area can do that. Even my Jersey giants have done that. But I was already building a larger area for them. Not sure if something else for the larger chicks would be an option for you. We are doing just that today, working on building larger areas, again.

Wow, chickens can be brutal even at such a young age. I will watch mine carefully when I remove my divider. I am doing a lot of integrating this year of young birds. It is such a hassle, time consuming and hard on my knees having to create these make shift separate pens where everyone can see each other and get use to each other so they don't kill each other. And yes, limited space is an ongoing issue until all birds are older and unwanted cockerels are removed for good. I'm NOT wishing Spring and Summer away but looking forward to the Fall only because all this chicken madness will be over. But I'm not in a hurry - honestly.

I had the exact same thing last year, I gave them more room and didn't have a problem after that. I think they do it when they get bored.

Chickens are pretty awful I think. My sons bantam Cochins were 4.5wks old and escaped their brooder and in seconds they'd eaten the whole top of my sons 1.5wk old chick in the brooder beside them. It was awful and absolutely amazing that the chick survived because it was just terrible

If you can confine them to a smaller area ( room) and keep them in there for a while under red light then they will not start this habit .They need to ajust to the lighting and don't seem too go after each other .I tried introduceing chicks that were only a month apart and they started almost immediatly at pecking at the smaller ones ! Once confined to a dark room under red light they stopped , got along and grew up together .I just put four different age groups ( breeds ) to gether outside rangeing from five weeks old to three month olds and not a single issue .As was said , the color of blood get's them going and once they start they won't stop and normally they will start at the back end and keep at it till they pull out the insides