The damage is on their backs, just in front of their tail feathers. But also on the top of their wings.
ewww, hadnt heard of these ones yetHello and welcome to BYC!
Does it appear that these feathers are chewed off at skin level? Are other feathers so over preened that they are stalks? Look closely at some of the feathers, espcecially if she has any on her wings or tail....do they have horizontal thin spots like lines across the feather?
If you can answer yes to all of these questions, you are probably dealing with feather mites or depluming mites as they are called. I had 2 hens with all of these symptoms and wow, did they chew off their feathers on their loins, infront of the tail by the preen gland, legs, wings, they were a bald mess!
These types of mites are usually spread by wild birds. They are completely invisible to the naked eye and live most of their lives up inside the shaft of the feather. They feed on newly growing feathers...hence the horizontal thin line on the feather. When they completely eat an entire feather clean, they come down out of the shaft and move on to the next feather. They are rarely on the skin of the bird at all and the bear live young up inside the feather. (they do not lay eggs)
These things are so irritating to the bird, the bird will over preen and strip the feathers down to stalks. Even chew them off at skin level just to relieve the annoyance.
If you do suspect this, what I did was get some Ivermectin Pour on for Cattle. I dosed these 2 birds behind the neck once a week for 6 weeks. I gave them a month off and dosed them again for another month. The following fall they molted into beautiful feathers.
For a standard sized breed, use 6 or 7 drops behind the neck on the skin only. Getting it on the feathers is useless, this stuff needs to be absorbed by the skin and into the blood stream.
For bantams, use 3 or 4 drops in the same manner.
Standard powders and sprays will not work because these mites are up inside the shaft. So the meds need to be in the bloodstream to be effective and when they do come down out of the feathers to find another, the skin needs to be toxic at all times.
Use probiotics too while using this stuff, I am sure this is hard on their systems, but these mites are not easy to get rid of. All birds have them, but some birds have a difficult time controlling them should they be old, sick or have been exposed to lots of these things.
Good luck!
It is possible this is just old damage from the rooster. Remember, feathers do not heal themselves and need to molt off the bird in the fall to look new again. So I would definitely look carefully to diagnose whether this is from these mites or not. Feathers will definitely have the horizontal barring on the larger feathers...primaries and tail feathers. If you don't see this horizontal barring, this may just be from the rooster in the past.
