Fourteen-week old quail molting?

[CovidtimeQuail]

None of my other birds have molted this early. Two of the silver colored birds appear to be molting at fourteen weeks of age. It doesn't look like overbreeding -- they still have feathers in their head and I don't see the male overly favoring them. It's only their back feathers and the exposed skin looks bald but otherwise fine.

Could this be normal, or is it possible they're allergic to the bedding/feed/sand bath or any other item? They otherwise seem quite healthy and pretty much oblivious to their lack of feathers.

 

[muddy75]

I just went through a similar situation with my last hatch…….I couldn’t pinpoint an exact cause but it seemed to improve once I moved them outside. If you have made any changes in your set-up recently, you may want to rule out possible causes. Overheating can be responsible for feather loss in young birds as well.

 

[007Sean]

Could be overcrowding, not in the typical fashion of overcrowding though....if they are constantly bunching up and crawling over each other, it can cause the feather loss.
I've had as little as 3 birds in a brooder that had feather loss on their backs, due to 'bunching up' ...as @muddy75 , said, once moved to a larger outdoor pen the feathers regrew.

 

[CovidtimeQuail]

I wanted to update everyone. I think I pinpointed the cause of feather loss. Zoysia grass cuttings are too prickly for use in bedding. I was practically stabbing them with it. The added DE likely only made the situation worse. Now that I have them on standard poultry bedding mixed with dried leaf matter, they're looking better.