Are my girls molting or is something wrong?

[Jiff]

My two almost nine month old dominiques have been losing a lot of feathers lately, but I just noticed in the past few days that one has lost almost all of the feathers around her face and on the back of her neck, and the other has lost quite a few on her head but not as many. I thought that they would be too young to molt and wouldn't do it with the weather getting so cold, but I hope that I am wrong. Could they be molting or could there be some other kind of problem (mites, etc)?

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'd bet it is a molt. If you check out these two links you'll probably be pretty certain yourself.

Mississippi State describes molting
http://msucares.com/poultry/management/poultry_feathers.html

Kansas State feather loss
http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/library/lvstk2/mf2308.pdf

 

[Attack Chicken]

My little bantam mixed girl and my big ol leghorn girl are going through a pretty rough molt right now. They almost have no neck feathers

 

[Sequin]

Almost all of mine are at various stages of moult right now too. I just now have a few coming out of it. I didn't think my new girls would go through one this Fall either, but they all did. There goes my theory of staggering their ages to keep egg production averages regular rather than going from all to none during their moult.

 

[Goldendoodles]

Several of my 9-10 month old hens are molting now. I was confused at first since I thought I read somewhere that they didn't molt till the end of their second year. And only about half of them lost any feathers at all, but I did a little research, and read that some birds have a mini-molt at the end of the first year. My guess would be that the same thing is happening to your birds.
Hope this helps.

 

[Hutton]

i would dust em with food grade diatomaceous earth just to be safe.i use it for everything ,in feed,the boxes,on the coop floor.also in the bottom of the water bowl(i sinks too the bottom)alge will not grow.i live in north florida my girls are molting.they still look the same.soft shiny feathers .if its mites this will do the trick.also by putting one cup in 25 lbs of feed it promotes feather growth.ive had chickens all my life ..i have the best lookin birds i have ever had....cluuk cluk

 

[Happy Chooks]

I have two 9 month old chickens molting right now. And my buttercup started with the head and neck, then the body.