amberlkuntz
In the Brooder
- Jul 8, 2022
- 25
- 55
- 49
I have 2 breeds of chickens that I got a year ago (9 Welsummers and 3 Olive Eggers) as chicks. We were allowing our chickens in our garden this fall/winter and in December our neighbor's dog came over and attacked. He pulled a couple tail feathers out of 1 Olive Egger, a couple back feathers out of 1 Welsummer, and a lot of feathers near the vent of another Olive Egger. He also smashed our chicken tunnel we had going around the garden to a pancake so we shut it and the garden off to the hens for a few weeks because he came back a 2nd time and we were afraid he would get ahold of more hens. They were then confined to their chicken run and from all the calculations it should be big enough for more than 12 hens. The day after the attack I was noticing the hens were picking feathers off each other and eating them, BUT they were only doing it to the Welsummers. So out of my 9 Welsummers, within a week, 6 of them were missing feathers on their backs, and none of the Olive Eggers were/are affected (the 2 Olive Eggers that got feathers pulled out grew them back and are doing great!). I tried giving them entertainment with a swing, dust bath, hanging cucumbers, feeding some fodder, etc and also gave them mealworms for extra protein as I read that can help after a tramatic event like this. Nothing seemed to help. We then put saddles on 6 of the Welsummers that were missing feathers. They have had them since middle of February and I am not seeing a ton of regrowth. Now in the past month I am seeing 2 more Welsummers that are starting to miss feathers. They start towards the tail on the back and move forward. I have cleaned their coop, checked for mites, lice, bugs, etc and seeing nothing on them or in the coop. I have dusted their coop and nesting boxes with DE and their run with lime. We have moved their tunnel to the inside of the garden fence and added an electric fence on the outside for the dog (a couple weeks after the dog attacked). He has not come back since. We do not have a rooster, but I have one Welsummer hen (that currently has a saddle on herself) that has mounted some of the other Welsummers. I am not sure if she is just going after 1 hen or multiple hens (they all look so similar it is hard to tell from a distance), but each time I have seen her do that she was mounting another hen that also has a saddle. Still none of the Olive Eggers are affected. I am not seeing them eat them, but I am not finding feathers all over either. I also find it weird that it is only the Welsummers that this is happening to. We are 5 months since the attack, I figured feathers would be coming back. I did see some get some pin feathers in before I put the saddles on them and they were pulling those out, hence why I put the saddles on them. What do I do?! How do I get them to stop losing feathers? They have to be pulling them (I have not seen them pull them in a long time), but I am not sure why and what to do about it as I feel like I have done everything I can to make it stop. Any suggestions would be helpful.
**I posted pictures I took tonight, one is of a Welsummer who is starting to lose her feathers and the other is of a Welsummer with a saddle on (her saddle was flipped up a little so you can see the fuzzy feathers towards her tail on her back). Their feathers look wet, because it just rained and while it was sprinkling they were having a hay day chasing frogs and scratching for worms so they got wet themselves.
**I posted pictures I took tonight, one is of a Welsummer who is starting to lose her feathers and the other is of a Welsummer with a saddle on (her saddle was flipped up a little so you can see the fuzzy feathers towards her tail on her back). Their feathers look wet, because it just rained and while it was sprinkling they were having a hay day chasing frogs and scratching for worms so they got wet themselves.
