10 day old chick - bald patches

[firerose34]

Hi, I'm new to the forum (and raising chickens) and I have a question. I searched around for an answer but forgive me if I missed it somewhere....

I have a 10 day old black star chick with large (increasing in size) completely bald patches in its down, on her back, under her feathers, and now a few on her neck. It seems like she is itchy, and she is picking at herself. She already had bald patches when the chicks arrived in the mail, and I assumed she had been pecked at in transit. But, since they have been here in the brooder, I haven't noticed any chicks pecking at her, or any chicks pecking at each other at all.

My first thought is that she has lice or something, but she is the only one with this behavior at all. They had a hard transit which was a day longer than expected and cold, and we lost a few that arrived very weak and never recovered. All of the surviving chicks, are quite robust, and the balding one otherwise seems energetic and healthy.

Does anyone have a guess as to what is going on, or what I could do? When I googled "chick with bald patches lice" all I got were pictures of Kim Kardashian!

 

[TheEggCollecter]

First off let me say you gave me quite the laugh with the Kim Kardashian search results!

Now for the chick. Where did you get him/her from? It is likely that she has a pest of some sort, maybe mites. Could you post a picture to be sure?

 

[firerose34]

Hi, thanks for the quick response! The chick is from the Murray McMurray hatchery. Right now we have 25 black stars and 30 rhode island reds and she is the only one with this issue. Here's a picture. When she is sitting down you can really see how her shoulders and under her wings are also getting bald.

 

[TheEggCollecter]

Does the open skin look irritated, is it hot?

 

[firerose34]

That's the weird thing....the skin doesn't look red, irritated, hot, or scabby, but she is doing the chick equivalent of scratching herself (with her beak)....if I didn't know better I would say that this chick has just developed a nervous down pulling tic. I wonder if there is anything I could put on it to discourage this/ discourage itchiness?

 

[firerose34]

When I wrote "down pulling" I meant as opposed to feather pulling. She is creating bald patches on areas that are still downy, which is most of her at this age. She isn't pulling out any feathers (yet :/ )

 

[TheEggCollecter]

That was my second guess. She/he is probably just nervous, give her some time to settle in. Her feathers will come in very soon. if it keeps progressing then look for other options some try chicken saddles to discourage feather picking.

 

[AmyLM]

I would contact mmh and send them the picture and see what they say. This last order of chicks I ended up with 2 chicks (both blue/splash andalusian hens) that had conjoined toes and both were having issues walking initially. MMH wanted pictures and progress reports on them to give to the breeder. They also got pictures of my pure white polish hen with the worst scissor beak I've ever seen that survived. They actually to know if there are any problems. Since all of your other chicks are fine I doubt that it's lice. I also don't see skin irritation or evidence of pecking. I'm wondering if the feather loss maybe that the chick has an issue with feather growth its self. I have a 1 year old buttercup hen that can't grow feathers on the back of her neck. It's not mites, not plucking, she just doesn't grow them at all. The skin is smooth more like my naked necks. Just give the chick time but make sure to ask mmh.

 

[firerose34]

Thank you both. This is good advice.

 

[aungs01]

Thank you for this information. We have 10 chicks that are five days old and we have one chick that seems to be doing the same thing. We got our chicks from 4-H and we've never had chicks before. This seems to be our chicks problem. Hopefully the chick will calm down and become comfortable with our place.