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thanks everyone 4 all the replies  as i said the head wound is really bad and the yb has no skin only bone showing thru on the top of his head and one of his eyes is now worse    ive treated the head wound with anti-septic powder but its not looking too good  the yb has gone very quite and isnt moving much unless touched but i will perservere 4 now and hope for the best   the yearling cock bird that scalped the yb had blood on his beak and wattles so he really did a number on the poor yb   hes been put in a crate 4 the moment  its the 1st time i nearly lost my temper with one of my birds  im now worried that he may get a taste 4 bullying the young,uns    debbie

Quoted from DJ

thanks everyone 4 all the replies  as i said the head wound is really bad and the yb has no skin only bone showing thru on the top of his head and one of his eyes is now worse    ive treated the head wound with anti-septic powder but its not looking too good  the yb has gone very quite and isnt moving much unless touched but i will perservere 4 now and hope for the best   the yearling cock bird that scalped the yb had blood on his beak and wattles so he really did a number on the poor yb   hes been put in a crate 4 the moment  its the 1st time i nearly lost my temper with one of my birds  im now worried that he may get a taste 4 bullying the young,uns    debbie

Just keep it in for a while, we had a rouge fantail cock that did the same thing, get a hen to keep it occupied
Let's hope it recovers, I have seen some amazing healing on pigeons, this one was hawked and still survived  

Debbie, unfortunately it appears to be the nature of the beast, 'jealous genes' maybe, the male of the species, given the opportunity,  always seems very able to kill offsping that he himself didn't sire.

With pigeons, it seems no different, make sure that those opportunities   are limited and one thing's for sure, when they draw blood, they'll keep at it till the target youngster, hen, or other cock is dying or dead. Last year a cock was removed from one of our Open race baskets, feathers  away from his head and the back of his neck, skin broken and red with blood. That bird had been in that basket less than 2 hours, and Fed officials reckoned had he not been spotted, he'd have been dead before morning. As it was, I took him home with me, cleaned him up and handed him back to his owner next afternoon at the after-race clock meeting, definitely OK and will live to race another day.  

You didn't say how old your youngster was, is it feeding by itself or is it still being fed by its parents? Give it at least a week to brighten up. I still have a bird that when a YB lost part of his eye in an accident in my garden. Didn't think  he'd last the night.  I broke 1/4 of a soluble child aspirin in his jar of drinking water for the pain, but he wouldn't eat and didn't seem to be drinking - not much anyway.. and it was a week before I saw he was coming round. I know birds don't feel pain the way we humans do, but I think they suffer 'shock' like us, at least it looked very like it in my bird, so maybes that's what you are seeing?  

But we can only do so much - give it a week, but at the first sign of suffering, be prepared to put the bird out of its misery.

really rotten when this happens, but allthough they heal quite well, their allways left with a bad scarring on the head, pesonally , never found them to be great at racing , but for breeding ok,