Bleeding vents and pulled tail feathers in roos

[BigPeep]

My 4 month old Buff Orpington roos are having a problem. I found one today sitting on the ground being pecked and when I lifted it up all of it's tail feathers were missing and it's vent had been eaten open. I isolated it and it died in a couple of hours, as expected.

Then I saw another one running around behaving normally but with a bleeding rear end. When I examined it, all of the tail feathers had been pulled out but no vent damage yet. I isolated it as well and will see how it's doing in the morning.

Since I was planning on culling most of the roos at maturity anyway, only keeping two for breeding, I am not too upset, but don't want it to spread to the hens.

There are several possibilities I am considering:

(1) The two roos in question got into it and pulled each other's tail feathers out;

(2) There was a loud scream from what I thought was just one bird yesterday when I went to close the roof on the mobile coop and there was a chicken that had flown up and perched without my noticing. Maybe there were two of them and the lid pulled their feathers out;

(3) They have mites or lice;

(4) The geese and/or ducks that are in with them are pulling out their tail feathers when they get rowdy;

(5) There is some kind of Ebola virus thing going on.

Please help me before this spreads!

 

[Eastins Eggs]

How many rosters do you have? What is your hen to roster ratio?

 

[Hangin Wit My Peeps]

Do you by chance have rats? I have seen many threads here on that and many thought rats. Good luck and I hope you find the problem.

 

[BigPeep]

No rats. Mice. Where you have mice, you don't have rats, and vice versa.

These are 4 month olds from a straight run so half are roosters. Only the roosters are having their feathers picked so far.

I had been giving them lots of tomatoes recently so maybe they were eating too much of that and not enough mash.

I don't have feed out all day due to squirrels and chipmonks that abound and can get into the run.

They like the duck food more than their own mash. I don't know what's in that but I can't keep them out of it unless I build a partition and then their space may be too cramped. I am builing a winter coop which will give them more space so I am trying to hold out until then.

In retrospect, the backs of some of the birds did show signs of pecking before but I wasn't sure if this was pecking or just the feathers continuing to come in at different rates on different birds.

I would try a commercial flock block but it's not going to be organic certified so that would blow my cerified organic eggs.

I will look for some organic cat food today and throw some cabbage heads in there.

They are in a small enclosure at night. It's really more of a mobile hen house situation but it isn't mobile. The run is 30 by 60 for 20 chickens, 8 ducks and 2 geese.

 

[Uppity Peon]

I think they may be overcrowded. Not sure why only the roosters are suffering this problem. Maybe their tails are getting trapped because of a poorly designed coop. But it's time to cull them. Why waste your expensive organic feed on them anyway?

Minimize rodent problems by closing the buffet at night. I use a hanging feeder that gets locked up at night. It is designed to minimize spillage.

Make sure they are not sufferiing from cocci, mites, lice, or internal parasites.

My 3 cents.