One of my chickens has pecked another to death

[Kitsmummy]

3 ex batts that we got 10 days ago. One has always been scabbier than the rest but her feathers were starting to grow back and I thought she was doing really well. I checked on them this afternoon and she was in her nesting box with blood all over the inside of the eglu and her bum was bleeding really badly.

We rushed her to the vets and he said she was almost dead and needed to be put to sleep. Basically she had a massive growth above her bum (the vet said it had obviously been there a while, so before we got her) and she had been pecked to death.

So now we have two, the more confident one was obviously the perpetrator as she has blood over her beak and I've seen her giving a few pecks at other chicken's bum. Help, what can I do?

And RIP Sparkles

Chickens will kill weaker chickens to protect the flock. It's not nice but it's a protective instinct to keep the flock safe. My two best bits of advise are get some purple antibiotic spray and check your chickens for wounds and spray immediately, they are much less likely to peck at it. Keep scabby/ill/lazy chickens as deprecate as possible. Failing that get a cockerel to manage the pecking order.

I used to care for chickens in a penned environment and my god they can be nasty bastards. The amount of hens I had to catch up and isolate to stop them from being killed by the others, it was very distressing. Totally changed my opinion of them.

Have you got any way of separating the weaker hens until they get stronger?

Well I've only got two hens left now (Mean Bastard Omelette and Seems Pretty Healthy Barbara). I would say Barbara's in pretty good shape for an ex batt so I'm hoping Omelette won't go for her too much, shall I just keep a close eye on them and separate if I can see Barbara getting worse for wear? separate how, I've only got an Eglu?!

And thanks for purple spray advice, will get some