Feather breaking/picking, any ideas

[Netherworldtaken]

She seems to be tolerating the cold well but I am a bit concerned for my daughters last remaining red. At first I thought she was molting but it looks more like the feathers are breaking off. I cannot find any bugs or anything on her. On her chest area she is missing a two or three inch area of feathers. Like I said at first I thought it was a poorly timed molt but it appears that at least some of the feather have been broken off as there is still a stem, for lack of a better word, attached. Wondering if this is what a molt looks like, if she is picking feathers or what. Any advice would be appreciated. tried to get a couple of pics but she isnt cooperating.

 

[Chickengal505]

What kind of diet do you have her on? lack of protein can cause poor feather health. Also you said that she is your daughter's last chicken. Do you have other chickens?

 

[Netherworldtaken]

we have them on layer crumbles and occational scratch. we have buff orph and the barred rock that you can see intruding on the first pic. (She lost her second red to a freak feeder malfunction and her other red ended up being a him and got adopted out.) The buff and the barred are doing fine. they did get caught out in a freak wind storm last week. could that have damaged her feathers?

 

[Netherworldtaken]

After looking at some other posts I think I know what is going on. I am used to seeing smaller birds go through a molt, like budgies and such. I think what we are seeing, now that we got her to stay in one place for a minute, is new feathers coming in. When we had smaller birds the process seemed to be much quicker and didnt look quite like this. I will keep monitoring over the next couple of days to see how it goes but I'm farely certain she is ok. By the way, I am amazed at how comfortable temperature wise their coop is. We have a decent sized window open on the east side of the coop and it is a decent temp with almost zero odor. Guess I did a decent job designing and building this one.