Feather Plucking Rooster

[Buster]

Quote:
My laying mash is 16% protein and I throw out about 3-4 cups of sunflower seeds and about 3 cups of chopped oats (I have a free supply of chopped oats) each day. I don't know if this is too much or too little, but it's what I've been doing and it seems to be helping.

 

[Vikkisrooster]

I think I need to check this feed.I had to start buying the Purina pellets,its so hard to find pellets here.But I will give them the extra goodies that you mentioned and try that!
****Love This Site*****

 

[karmical]

I've been battling the feather picking since December! It started happening right around the first cold snap when I started giving them cracked corn to help keep warm. I've since read that feeding cracked corn with a commercial layer feed can dilute the amount of methione in the chickens' diet and they try to get it back up themselves by eating feathers.

I got a lot of great advice here...for MY girls (no roo involved) it seemed a dietary issue with just a dash of boredom. So I stopped giving them the corn, started feeding black oil sunflower seeds as scratch, added AviaCharge2000 to their water, and screwed an empty suet cage to the wall of my coop. I fill it with spinach every day and they spend hours picking out pieces and chasing each other around.

The feather picking seems to have subsided for the most part. (It only just started up again now that one of my girls went broody and wasn't getting the AviaCharge and BOSS for a couple of weeks....but I won't bore you with all THAT

)

Anyways....I hope some of that helps. I used the Vicks in the meanwhile while working out the nutrition and it really seemed to help deter the picking too...be sure to put enough on so the picker gets a good taste when they pick! Good luck....I know how frustrating this can be!