disheveled birds?

[scooby]

my flock use to be very beautiful, but i noticed last year that they were starting to look very disheveled, losing feathers,burnt skin, and even the feathers they do have arn't full and pretty but they are sparse and rough. they just look ruff. i have a very large roo and i lost some hens last year and my roo being as "active" as he was with my girls started cutting up the remaining 4 of them. i put chicken saddles on the worse ones and there feathers still arn'tcoming in and its been a good 3 months with them on. its also not helping the feathers on their wings. so last winter they molted and i thought o great now there feathers will come in nice, and they did for about a month and them they started degrading again. and now my roo has a bare butt and he use to have beautiful long tail feathers. I'v never seen them picking at each other. what is going on? and what do i do about it?? i need help, i'm sick of having ugly chickens.

 

[sourland]

Sounds as if the rooster is going through a molt. Only solution to the condition of the hens is an extended separation from the rooster. Allow brief conjugal visits if you want fertile eggs; otherwise, as you know you really don't need a rooster.

 

[scooby]

i don't think he's molting, they molt in october every year like clock work.and its just his hind end, o and another thing i forgot to mention was that they are also very sparse on there bellies . so backs, bellies, wings, and some necks and some butts. o and another thing which address's the roo situation is i did think the ratio of hen to roo was low so i did add another batch of chicks (5 hens) this summer,they arn't laying yet, and they are fine nothing wrong with them.thats another thing they should start molting in another month so i want to figure it out now. and we are also building a nice big 8x10 coop for them should be done this weekend, they have all been in my little 3x4 scrap made one and so hubby finally decided it was time.( after a year of begging.) so any other suggestions to try............

 

[southerndesert]

Have you checked them for mites, lice, and parasites?

 

[Impress]

Look for parasites definitely, my husband shirked his dusting duties this summer and we have a couple naked butted chickens now. Mites and lice eat their feathers, irritate them until they pick their feathers or they fall out, etcetera, sounds like a parasite infestation to me.

 

[scooby]

i checked last year after they started looking this way and they where clean, but i will recheck them again and probably dust anyways.