MOLTING CHICKEN??

Hi I am new to the site and fairly new to owning chickens. I have 9 chickens (8 hens and 1 roo) I have a hen that appears to be loosing feathers around her neck and her face looks rather sparce.. I don't know if its molting or if she is being pecked at by other
chickens. I am not seeing any of the others having the same issues. I tried to get a picture but don't think it shows enough to see what is going. please help

thanks





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Good to have you here! Check out the learning center to get a lot of your questions answered. It's a great resource, and I've spent countless hours there myself! Any google search with a direct question will also bring you to BYC...in case you don't get an answer sometimes.

I enlarged the picture and can't see a real problem there. She's young, yes? Still growing feathers in?

From what I can see, it looks like she's molting.


This particular hen is experiencing a partial molt.




Hope this helps!

She is about 9 months old I had a hard time getting a picture of her but under the other feathers there are feathers that are gone that look like needles. She kinda looks the photo above of some molting chickens. I just didn't know if she is molting the rest would because they are all the same age or if that does not matter.

If she is molting, and you don't care about her being organic, baked ground up soybean usually makes the molt go faster. I feed baked beans as I call them to my chickens, and I haven't had a molt so far. (Although the oldest is a little over a year). I think it's worth a try, especially if you live on a farm as I do, and have excess beans all over the place. Just a thought. If you do try it, I would appreciate if you told me your results! Good luck

I will have to give that a try so ground up soybeans daily or few times a week? I am concerned more because we are sappose to have below zero weather coming and i know they can handle cold but just concerned if she will continue to loose more before the cold snap and get colder than usual.

The 'needles' are new feathers growing in.
More protein can help them grow out the new feathers faster.
Read your feed bag label for nutrient content and adjust other foods given to keep things in balance.
There are many other sources of protein, but use with discretion and always with moderation.


I like to feed a 'flock raiser' 20% protein crumble to all ages and genders, as non-layers(chicks, males and molting birds) do not need the extra calcium that is in layer feed and chicks and molters can use the extra protein. Makes life much simpler to store and distribute one type of chow that everyone can eat. I do grind up the crumbles (in the blender) for the chicks for the first week or so.

The higher protein crumble also offsets the 8% protein scratch grains and other kitchen/garden scraps I like to offer. I adjust the amounts of other feeds to get the protein levels desired with varying situations.

Calcium should be available at all times for the layers, I use oyster shell mixed with rinsed, dried, crushed chicken egg shells in a separate container.

Animal protein (mealworms, a little cheese - beware the salt content, meat scraps) is provided during molting and if I see any feather eating.