Asking for Chicken advice

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Emily's mom

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We've only had chickens for one year.

Last winter they started to loose their bum feathers, we dusted them for bugs and such.

They went all winter in the snow with naked bums
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and seemed to make out ok.

We had to keep them penned up this summer because they made "tossed Hosta salad" with all my Hosta plants.

I did have hay in their nests, but have changed it to sawdust. Now they are loosing other feathers, I hate to pick them up because they look and feel like something that you buy in the store to put in the oven.....oh these are laying hens and pets.

I guess I'm just wondering if they should have vitamins or something to encourage feather growth.

Or is there anything I can do
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Any input would be appreciated.
 
Hi Cheryl... that can be frustrating indeed. What are you feeding your flock? Make sure they're getting a complete feed that contains Biotin and goodies such as that like a good Layer pellet. Grains can be ok, as a mix in, but I've found that my chickens are much healthier with a complete feed and just give them grains here and there to mix in with it. That's what I can think of of the top of my head, since you've dusted for mites and lice (?). If I come up with any more suggestions I'll post later.

Forgot to mention...this is not just strait out moulting that you are noticing in your young flock is it? When they molt they will loose feathers and grow pin feathers in for new ones moving in.
 
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Are these hens that have this problem? Do you have a rooster? Some of my hens have bare backs due to the roosters "mating" techniques.

Another idea is putting D.E. in their laying boxes and it can also go in their food. Its a great organic de-wormer & de-licer. I use it for my goats too!
 
This wouldn't be caused my mating techniques. The same thing happened to our chickens are the 4h barn, i can't remember what it was though. Are they packing eachother?
 
I know you said you dusted for bugs but it still could be lice. Are they free range or in a pen that they have been in for quite sometime? Lice can come back you can dust and still have lice a few weeks later from the eggs that are hiding.Sometimes it can be a very persistent problem as the eggs can be on the soil of the pen so repeated treatment is needed sometimes several times.
 
D. E. is Diatomaceous Earth. Diatoms are little algae-type thingies that have shells made of silica. D. E. is rather like very finely powdered glass, only from an organic souce. Gardeners use it for all manner of pests.

Chickens can be a real pain about pecking/eating each other's feathers. My Polish almost never have head feathers, because they will not leave each other alone! If you isolate one of these girls, do their feathers grow back in?
 
Oh man, I've had lots of experience with this. I believe your chickens are pulling them out of each other. Mine were like that too. Once I ruled out them not having enough space (as the 10 of them have a 10x10 room and a 10x30 run, which is more than plenty) then I researched dietary issues related to feather picking/eating. I noticed that not only were the chickens picking feathers off of each other, they were actually EATING them. Ugh. I read that it might be a protein difficiency, so I upped their protein and that really didn't help. So I did more research and discovered and was also advised to begin feeding a supplement called AviaCharge 2000 which you can buy from the McMurray site. You mix a little of it in their water, and while it smells pretty bad to me, the chickens didn't really seem to notice any difference. It was not long after that I noticed feathers growing back and the picking lessening quite a bit. Now, unfortunately, the picking habit seems to be fairly ingrained, but it's not as bad and I don't see them actually eating them any more.

Hopefully that will give you another avenue to research and try. The product was kind of expensive at something like $30, but I have been using it for a year now and still have quite a bit left.

Jayne
 
If they have access to cedar shavings that will cause them to loose their feathers too. Hope you find out what it is!
 
Its funny but it seems everyones are doing this. Friends who keep extremly clean coops are looseing theirs. Mine went and lost theres as well. I've heard an old wives tale that the best laying chickens are never the prettiest. lol I think I'mve finally figured out what they mean. Anywhoo, they did eventually grow their feathers back, but we had to seperate a couple becuase they were picking on each other so badly.
 
I don't know if this will help my chickens are free range and the come into the coop at night to roost. We give them crushed oyster shells to eat. It helps with their food digestion in the gizard. Never had any naked bums here unless they were penned in a small enclosure when they were younger. As soon as they were released (3 acres) they did fine and grew their feathers back.

Hope this helps.

Carlene
 
We used to keep the crushed oyster shells. Also, I kept a box of wood ash out for them to roll and fluff in to help keep lice/mites away. Seemed to work! We had a wood stove at the time, so it was pretty easy to do
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Winter time I would take a few bales of local wheat straw and wet it to get the wheat to sprout. They really loved that!! Sometimes I would throw a couple table spoons of grass see in there to same reason == fresh grass in winter!
 

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