Broken blood feather came from......"I dunno!"

[Dhkoenig]

Yesterday I was de-pooping my coop and I found a blood feather on the ground. I was able to rule out my two buffs, but it could have been any of the others based on it's color and size. It definitely seems like a tail or outer wing feather because it was long and big. So I looked around the coop and sure enough I saw blood on a lower perch that the chooks use to get up and down from the high one. It looks like the chicken might have stopped there a bit to try to preen it or something after it broke. So I went out to the run to see if I could figure out which hen or rooster it was and i could see ZERO evidence on any of them. Not a drop of blood anywhere to give it away. Recently I had to catch and hold all of my chickens because I wanted to dust their behinds with DE after doing a coop overhaul and it was traumatic. Most of my chickens do NOT like to be held and seem to be genuinely terrified of me (???) except when I am putting down treats....but it was traumatic for everyone when I had to catch each one. So...needless to say I don't want to do this again to them anytime soon. My question - whichever chicken it came from, obviously the bleeding stopped and they are fine but do I need to worry about an infection or something? I really don't want to chase them down again.

 

[CoopintheWoods]

I wouldn't worry. If you couldn't find out which chicken it was, the injury couldn't have been major. Between bullying, molting, and over-aggressive preening, chickens lose feathers all the time.
Keep your eyes open in case you find more feathers, but just one isn't an issue.

Best wishes!

 

[Dhkoenig]

I wouldn't worry. If you couldn't find out which chicken it was, the injury couldn't have been major. Between bullying, molting, and over-aggressive preening, chickens lose feathers all the time.
Keep your eyes open in case you find more feathers, but just one isn't an issue.

Best wishes!

Thanks so much CoopintheWoods!

 

[PippinTheChicken]

I had a roo who accidentally pulled a foot feather out when he was preening. It wasn't bad, but he was bleeding quite a bit and was slightly limping. I put some powder on him and gave him loads of hugs. He just needed a day and he was fine by that afternoon.
If you don't know who's it is, I doubt it was bad, but I'm glad that you care about your chickens enough that you brought it up even if it seems small. Don't worry about infection, but if someone's acting 'off' or limping you know what to do

 

[Dhkoenig]

I had a roo who accidentally pulled a foot feather out when he was preening. It wasn't bad, but he was bleeding quite a bit and was slightly limping. I put some powder on him and gave him loads of hugs. He just needed a day and he was fine by that afternoon.
If you don't know who's it is, I doubt it was bad, but I'm glad that you care about your chickens enough that you brought it up even if it seems small. Don't worry about infection, but if someone's acting 'off' or limping you know what to do

aw thanks so much! Yes I am obsessed with them - sometimes they must be like "Jeez leave us alone! Helicopter Mom!" lol