Hi everyone
We have 6 girls in total, 3 of which are relatively new to us. Putting them all together has been a right nightmare we have been doing in slowly over a period of a couple of months firstly keeping them separate but they even fought through the wire. We did evening sessions where we put them all together for a couple of hours using treats to discourage any bullying and also spraying the bully with water, picking them up etc.
Then we moved them all into the same run but they kept their separate coops but in the end the new ones started going into the old girls coop anyway so their coop has become pretty much redundant but unfortunately the bullying has continued.
I have tried all sorts but it doesn't stop and one of the old girls is the worst by far so I am considering separating her.
Anyway 2 of the new girls just avoid the old girls grabbing food and water (we have several drinkers/feeders dotted around) when they can but 1 of them has never integrated even when we first got her she would sit out of the way scared. Eventually after hand feeding her she came out of her shell and things seemed to get better for a while but the last few weeks the bullying has got bad again and she has retreated to the coop most days for near enough the whole day. I have been putting food and water in there but she hasn't really been eating or drinking very much and has lost a lot of weight. It wasn't until this morning that I noticed how bad things had got when I picked her up and she is as light as a feather. She has now stopped eating completely and looks so weak she just stands there.
I took her indoors and put her in a box in the kitchen hand feeding her some egg, cucumber, tomato, spinach and pellets but she was only partially interested and didn't want to know the egg at all. She was drinking however which I took to be a good sign. As I had to come to work I made up the other coop for her which has a small run attached and shut the door so the others can't get to her but she just went straight up the ramp and sat in the nesting box. I put the food and water in there for her but she didn't seem interested when I put it in front of her face.
I really feel like she has given up, I feel so guilty that I didn't notice how bad things had got but I guess I felt that I would make things worse by keep interfering.
Any ideas on what else I can do to help her to start eating again? I was going to buy some fishy cat food for her but I'm not convinced she will eat it.
Oh and she has been de-liced, wormed etc. but none of the new girls have laid an egg since being with us (one of them will occaisionally lay a softie) which is why the old owners wanted to get rid of them. They are approx 2.5 years old.
Cheers
Liz x