Feather damage

[Rick589]

I need some guidance please. When we started with chickens we ended up with two roosters and four hens. Before we were able to get rid of one of the roosters the hens took a beating and had most of their back feathers gone. Once we removed the one rooster everything calmed down and the hens eventually regained their feathers except this one pictured. As time went on we had two hens go broody and we allowed them to hatch out with the result being three additional roosters out of five eggs hatched. We now currently have ten chickens four of which are roosters and, as expected, the hens are once again taking a beating. All roosters except our original rooster will be going to auction within this coming week if all goes as planned which will get us to a better balance. All of the above is just to give a bit of background but my questions regard this pictured hen. Even before the advent of the additional roosters when everything was calm with only the one rooster she never seemed to get her back feathers to return, at least not as quickly as her sisters. Now she is about a year and a half old, and is looking ragged while all the other hens have returned to normal. I know despite our efforts the current environment has her stressed and beat up and this will be resolved shortly. Anyway, I’m hoping to get some insight from fellow chicken owners on how to tend to her featherless back. Should we do anything, applying anything to her skin? Put saddles on her again? ( they seemed to make matters worse the first time we put them on) Do nothing? I do see pin feathers, new feathers, coming on but they never seem to fill out like her sisters have and this has been the case well before these other roosters entered the picture.

 

[FunClucks]

I would definitely put a chicken saddle on her. There is a wide variety of quality/usefulness in chicken saddles. My favorite saddle (most durable, best protection, stays on super good) is below. They can be adjusted to fit everything from my white leghorns (small and sleek) to my New Hampshire meat birds (hefty as anything). At 1.5 years, she should be coming up on a molt. That's the only thing that will fix the feather damage. If the feathers get plucked out, they'll grow back immediately. If they get worn off or eaten, they will only come back after a molt.

In the meantime, see if there is any feather picking or eating happening to her from other flock members. That can exacerbate things. It may only happen on the roost at night when it's hidden from you, if you don't see anything. To curb feather picking, you can put Pinless Peepers on the offending bird, or you can separate this chicken more (look/no-touch setup). But really, best to cover what you can, and wait for the molt.

No cream is going to do much good.

Do verify that she doesn't have feather mites - it doesn't look like it to me, but I'm not 100% certain. They are microscopic. If she has feather mites, those will need to be treated, and you should look for them in the entirety of your flock and coop. Elector PSP is often a good treatment for those, if I recall correctly.

 

[Rick589]

Thank You. The saddles you show are the same that we have and used. Regarding mites I don’t see ant indication of them and the ret of the flock appears very robust and healthy. Funny thing about the molt is that we expected all of them to have molted by now, by this past fall, and we were surprised that it didn’t happen given that we understood a molt would occur in the fall~ after their first year.