Chicken losing all her feathers

[jimbopdx]

Hi,

I have 3 chickens and today I noticed that there were feathers all over their run. Two of them look fine, but one of them is losing a lot of feathers and looking very scrawny. She has spots all over her where it all the feathers look plucked out. She's acting stressed but not sick, and I don't know when the last time she laid an egg was. She's taken on kind of a dominant rooster role so she rarely lays eggs anyway. She's moving around well enough and responds to treats.

Anyone have any ideas? There is an avian vet in town but the $75 fee is more than I can afford. My best guess is that she was attacked because she does have a small red spot that could be a scratch in one of the places she has no feathers, and that the feathers are still falling out because of stress. It just looks like soon she won't have any feathers left.

Thanks for any help.

-Jim

 

[tfpets]

She could be moulting? Go to the Search option, search molting, and find the molting bird contest? There were some neat pics of featherless birds there that looked pretty pathetic. After you rule out any health issues, sometimes it just comes down to plain old molting!!
Best of luck finding out, hope she's just going to put on a new coat!

When my birds molt (I have 90+, it looks like someone blew up a bunch of feather pillows in my yard!!)

Oh, you can supplement her with vitamins and higher protien gamebird feed so that she can gain her strength and feather growth back...it drains the poor things when all their energy goes into making feathers!

Tina/tfpets