Hello everybody... We have a total of 5 chickens (4 Australorps and one Hybrid) and our chicken coop is pretty large (5x6x7) and our two oldest girls are 10 months old, the younger ones about 6. We are in Colorado and it gets quite frosty in the night, below freezing. One of our older girls stopped laying eggs about three weeks ago and two days ago, I noticed that she is beginning to lose the feathers around her neck and face. Her neck and face look rugged and I think she is molting, (beginning in the face and neck). Since she is losing feathers, I am worried about her staying warm in the night, so we put up a red light lamp (ceramic socket) to keep them warm. The lamp kicks on when the temparatur goes below 32F and goes off when it reaches 45F. My questions are, how do I make sure she is molting and it is not some freak disease? What has your experience been with the red light lamps in the Winter? Any good recepies which can help her have a "better molt"? Thank you!
I've got several moulting right now. It's getting down into the mid 20's at night here and it doesn't seem to bother them.
Here's a link on molting. It's an interesting read. http://msucares.com/poultry/management/poultry_feathers.html Give your birds lots of protein rich food- yogurt, BOSS, scrambled eggs, bits of meat, and maybe some limited amounts of cat food. I recently switched out my feed to a higher protein grower formula rather than their usual layer pellets to try to move things along more rapidly. Hope that helps. Good luck.
