Feather loss on 4 birds, still laying, otherwise healthy

[Kathy Golla]

I think maybe we need to back up for a second and start from square one.
1. How old are these hens?
2. How are these chickens losing their feathers? That’s an important question. Are they doing it to themselves or are they feather picking each other? There’s also something called beaking, where one hen picks on another (like chases them) just enough to break off the tops of the feathers on the back. Is it happening at night in the coop?
If you don’t know, attempt to find out. That will help us help you. You may have a few things going on.
Here’s an example: I have a hen that looks like your EE. I watched the hens as much as I could for a week and determined the hen was doing this to herself. During preening time, I could see the hen overpreening and breaking off her own feathers. I also noticed this hen was taking a lot of dust baths.
If we don’t know where the root cause is, it’s hard to make suggestions to help you.

 

[jmcjmc]

If this is caused by feather eating then that's pretty much impossible to stop.

Yikes. I'll hope that's not the case for the moment. That wouldn't be good at all...

1. How old are these hens?
2. How are these chickens losing their feathers?

They're all about a year old, give or take a few weeks. I guess I'm going to have to try and figure out how it's happening. We have kind of an unusual setup. They live in a pen that's wood walled, about 12'x12', 6 feet tall, roofed & reinforced with hardware cloth. Inside the pen they have a coop - I have never seen one of them go inside. If I put them inside they freak out and run back out. All 4 sleep on a roost outside. It's Southern California so weather/cold isn't usually an issue. Then they have a nesting box, outside of the coop. They all lay in there daily (and seem happy to do so). So they aren't exactly watchable, if you see what I mean. If I'm in the pen with them, or even have the door open, their behavior changes completely of course. I think I have an extra security camera somewhere. Maybe I can mount it over the roof and let it record them for a few hours.

 

[Kathy Golla]

Hi jmcjmc
Now I can appreciate your dilemma! Thanks for posting.
I think you might have a few things going on.
Having some visuals of what is going I think will be important. It looked like one of the hens feather picked the Australorp during your vacation. That bird may still be causing problems. It would be good to find that out.
Also, would be good to get a spotlight on if the BS and EE are overpreening and being obsessive about dust bathing. Do you have a spot for dust bathing?
Are you certain the lice are gone? Lice and poultry mites can cause these symptoms. Be certain those lice or poultry lice are gone. Pyrethrin is the treatment for that.
Barring all of that, this could be depluming mites. The BS looks like it and as rebrascora said the feather pix look like it.
Treatment is cattle pour on ivermectin. Six drops on the skin once a week on the back of the neck for five weeks.
These feathers that are broken off won’t grow back until they molt. Since they are only
But if it’s deplumingmites you should see the progression halt. There’s a chance you may have to take a month off then retreat.
Ivermectin will take care of any poultry mites also, but not lice.
Egg withdrawal time for ivermectin is two weeks.

 

[Kathy Golla]

https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/durvet-ivermectin-pour-on-250-ml

Get your hands on an eye dropper, correct dosage is important. Get six drops on the skin, not feathers.

 

[jmcjmc]

These feathers that are broken off won’t grow back until they molt.

Okay, I treated with Ivermectin a couple weeks ago. This might be a dumb question. If it is something like mites, and if the feathers won't grow back for a while, how do I know if I've resolved the issue? Do I just assume they're okay if it's not getting worse?

 

[Kathy Golla]

Did you do the dosage over the course of quite a few weeks? Depluming mites general protocol is Ivermectin once a week for five weeks.

With your wall set up it could be challenging, but what I saw was the depluming progression halted, the obsessive overpreening stopped and the obsessive dust bathing stopped.

 

[rebrascora]

I agree, observing your girls behaviour will be the tell tale sign that you are getting on top of the problem.

 

[jmcjmc]

Did you do the dosage over the course of quite a few weeks?

Damn, I saw the reply that said 6 drops, I completely missed the reply that said for 5 weeks. I guess I'll start over. Two months without edible eggs is pretty sad.

 

[jmcjmc]

Also, maybe the tiniest glimmer of good news. My wife had been checking on the birds the last few days. I haven't been out there. But when doing the ivermectin dose today I noticed the back of the BS still looks really bad, but the red area is shrinking and most of her back now looks like normal pink chicken skin! So maybe good things are happening...

 

[JerryC999]

I am going to hitch on this conversation with a similar situation. This is with two of seven birds, one is 3 and the other 2 years old (picture is of the older bird). Has been going on for perhaps 4 - 5 months now with neck feathers thinning out on the two birds, and now I am beginning to worry about a couple others. Behavior seems normal, egg production is close to normal (it is getting darker earlier). Is all the advice above the same for this? Ivermectin for five weeks?