Reading a lot on my brand new battle with feather picking. I think I have it narrowed down to boredom or protein issue. This first winter with chickens has been hard but I thought we were okay until last week. Went out to coop Friday morning and one of my PBR's had all of its butt downy feathers gone. Assumed molting. Later that day I was out checking on the girls because we were leaving for overnight and observed another of my PBR'S going from hen to hen picking feathers. Also noticed others starting to show bare spots. The original picked girl has it the worst. I coated her in Blue Kote. I picked up Pick No More yesterday and put on some of the others with smaller areas this morning. Got a couple bags of BOSS and a Purina Flock Block. I had been putting scratch out but maybe that wasn't enough? We have so much stinking snow out there! I hope I can get through this issue. My main question is with Blue Kote and Pick No More on heavy near the vent areas, I assume any eggs laid will get coated too. Are they (the eggs) still okay to eat? Any help would be appreciated. I hope we can get on top of this quickly. Thanks!!!
The eggs should be OK. I'm sure you're right about both boredom and protein. The chickens are probably stir crazy with their cabin fever. Scratch grains are about 10% protein on average. Because of the cold, they probably should be eating a little more scratch now but lets assume they are eating half scratch and half feed. That would bring overall intake to about 13% crude protein. That's too low. The BOSS is a good idea and perhaps replace the scratch with BOSS for a while. Some meat or fish scraps will help too as would a higher protein starter/grower.
I'm having the same issue with 4 out of 5 of my girls. I haven't seen any mites (I've been checking) and one of my girls is completely unaffected. I thought she was picking on the others, but I am now not sure. I have read that black oil sunflower seeds are good to give them during this time. Assuming they are suffering from boredom/protein deficiency. I just picked some up at Target the other day. Maybe you could give that a try. Good luck!
