Chicken Feather Quality bad due to Corn diet

[hiddenacres]

I just got my first Buckeye rooster yesterday and he was fed a corn diet all winter and now he has horrible feather quality. I bought him for show and he was show quality before his diet. I was wondering if there is anyway to fix his feather quality. I will have some pictures tonight of the damage done and that should help everyone who is happy to help with a remedy to the fix.
Thanks

Aaron

 

[Arielle]

Aaron, he needs a well fortified diet, not just one ingredient as you surmised. AN all corn diet is not enough.

He will need time to recondition, including molt out the old feathers. Be patient, this will take a long time.

Feed a high quality feed, including animal protein if you can. or buy it separately and top dress it. Like fish meal, or beef leftovers from your dinner.

Give him plenty of good healthy treats like vegies and fruit. ANd a good plain yogurt everyday or you can buy a product like Fasttrack for horses and sprinkle it on his moist fruit and vegies everyday. Mine like strawberies and pumpkin, and steal tomatos from the garden.

Plenty of clean fresh water

And room to move. SOmetimes feather issues develop from being in too small a space and bumping tail feathers a lot.

Good luck.

 

[hiddenacres]

Ok I will give him a diet like you said and he is spoiled every day with some left overs and other thing I find for him. He was free range partially and he had a lot of room. Thanks for the information

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Agree wholeheartedly with Arielle's advice. It amazes me when I hear people say they only feed corn and I've heard it a lot.

It will probably take a whole year as was said, he'll probably have to go through a molt.
A good quality feed should make up at least 90% of his diet for a while, since it's formulated for all the vitamin and mineral needs.
For a little while, boosting with some animal protein will help and a vitamin supplement. Healthy roosters don't need over 15% protein except when building feathers during molt.

 

[hiddenacres]

thanks the only reason he was fed corn like he was is because he was free ranged all winter with turkeys and the turkeys are fed corn

 

[enola]

He probably would benefit from being wormed with a good quality wormer also. (Not wazine)

You could probably force molt him but his body condition may not allow this.

 

[Arielle]

thanks the only reason he was fed corn like he was is because he was free ranged all winter with turkeys and the turkeys are fed corn

My turkeys are not fed an all corn diet. THey get a 22% protein complete feed, and then get added corn and can stop at the ahy pile for second cut green grass/alfalfa hay if they want. Usually the chickens are already there.

As chickenCanoe siad-- start with a high quality complete feed. Do you know how to make a fermented feed?? If not see the FF thread for details-- basically it is mixing the pellets with water enough to make it soupy, add an UNPASTRUIZED apple cider vinegar ( braggs or Heinz) and add a few table spoons per 1 qt of soup to get it going. Keep it warm and stir 2 times a day, more if you can. In a couple days you can start feeding.

This is your starter base, add some fresh pellets to replace the amt you took out.

Start with a small amount every day until he learns to eat it. Mine swarm me-- they love it though at first they turned away from the platter.

( You can use this vinegar for yourself too with great benefits, like on a salad)