Hello all, I was hoping some of you lovely people could help me as I'm worried about my two hens. They live all year round in a hutch & good sized run and appeared to be very happy with it in the year I have had them. I got them as my 1st hens at the point of lay and have consistently had an egg each per day since. A couple of weeks ago I went away for a week ensuring they had plenty of fresh water in their tank and plenty of food. When I came back they appeared to stop laying, in fact the day I got back there were a dozen eggs waiting for me which tells me they carried on as normal. Their food & water had gone down to the levels expected also.
In the week since I got back, for the 1st few days "Roxy" the more active of the two seemed a little off and spent a couple of days in the laying box sulking (but not laying) and only coming out a couple of times in those days to pick at some layers pellets and have a sip of water. After that she came out, did an almighty stinky turd and seems to be okay, until today when she appears to be either malting or pulling out her feathers or both, in the picture you can see she's almost bald on her lower back. The other hen, "Rainbow" has for the last four days taken on the sulking role and sits constantly in the laying box (also not laying), twitching a little and again, only coming out for a slight nibble & sip. She hasn't lost any feathers. She's normally very skittish and would bolt if I came anywhere near her but when I lift up the nesting box lid she doesn't seem to care that I'm there and is very docile, until I get too close and she goes to peck me in defence. She's sat sulking in the other photo and as you can see, her comb seems a healthy colour and she's not appearing to lose any weight.
Please can somebody help as I'm still new to this. Is it normal behaviour? what could be the issue? are they suffering?
In the week since I got back, for the 1st few days "Roxy" the more active of the two seemed a little off and spent a couple of days in the laying box sulking (but not laying) and only coming out a couple of times in those days to pick at some layers pellets and have a sip of water. After that she came out, did an almighty stinky turd and seems to be okay, until today when she appears to be either malting or pulling out her feathers or both, in the picture you can see she's almost bald on her lower back. The other hen, "Rainbow" has for the last four days taken on the sulking role and sits constantly in the laying box (also not laying), twitching a little and again, only coming out for a slight nibble & sip. She hasn't lost any feathers. She's normally very skittish and would bolt if I came anywhere near her but when I lift up the nesting box lid she doesn't seem to care that I'm there and is very docile, until I get too close and she goes to peck me in defence. She's sat sulking in the other photo and as you can see, her comb seems a healthy colour and she's not appearing to lose any weight.
Please can somebody help as I'm still new to this. Is it normal behaviour? what could be the issue? are they suffering?
