I spent some time with the owner of our local feed store yesterday afternoon. She and I have talked numerous times about dogs, cats ... and now chickens. She has a good-sized flock of her own and also works with the local 4H for their show birds.
After describing what I was seeing, living conditions, feed, etc., she felt strongly that this was likely a result of mites, because of where the bare skin is. She said that her rooster went through something similar recently, so she talked to her farm vet while he was there looking after some of her other animals, and that was the conclusion of their discussion also. I told her that I saw absolutely no evidence of mites when I looked at the birds, but she said that they can be hard to see. We talked about diatomacious earth (which I use in their coop sand, in the nesting boxes, and with which I have dusted the birds), and again, she said that DE just doesn't always take care of the problem. She recommended a permethrin dust, which I've bought. I'll dust the girls later today.
She also thought that it was really important to up the protein level of their food and made a couple of suggestions. Since my birds are also laying heavily, she said that the 4H'ers and other folks with show birds mix Calf-Manna into their food (about 1/3 / 2/3) to add protein to their diet and to improve the quality of their feathers. (The bag of Calf-Manna says it's for poultry too.)
In addition, she said that she mixes scratch with black oil sunflower seeds and raw shelled peanuts, buying a 35-50 pound bag of each and just dumping the whole thing into a metal can for mixing and storage. She felt that was a far superior treat diet than just scratch, and since I tend to throw in leftover veggies and also bread-type leftovers, that this would help balance out their diet a bit better. I bought a bag of sunflower seeds, but not the peanuts at this point (buying dog & cat foods, chicken feed & scratch all at the same time; my budget was screaming a bit!)
I brought up the idea that the birds might just be bored and she thought that was possible, but didn't think I should add flock-block to the pen at this point, saying that she thought it was better to keep things simple for now so that I could watch what was happening and know what was working. I'm going to work on getting the birds out of the coop earlier in the morning, which should keep coop-boredom down. ... Funny though -- this morning hubby had an earlier day, so let them out at about 7. It's still pretty dark around here at that time of the morning and, while they were excited to be let out, they were stumbling around in the dark falling over the divots they've dug, etc. I'll be glad when the days get a bit longer!
By the time we finished our discussion, we had quite a crowd of other chicken-keepers around us all asking questions and offering suggestions as well. All-in-all, it was a productive talk.
