Hellp! Silkie 3 days old plucking butt feathers.

[ScottyTerrier]

Basically my poor silkie chick who is only 3 or 4 days old is now plucking her butt fathers. So far I can only tell it is that one chick out of the 15 others. I isolated her and now she is having a fit being away from her friends .

What am I dealing with? Mites or a behavioral thing? What can I do I feel terrible isolating that chick it is not happy at all.

 

[ScottyTerrier]

I had to put another silkie in the isolation chamber with the butt plucker . He was just so sad

Still need some help

Edit: covered chick in DE and am waiting on sevin dust ordered from amazon

 

[ScottyTerrier]

Bump

 

[Eggcessive]

Have you looked over her skin for evidence of mites or lice? Did she come from a hatchery, or was she hatched locally? If there are no bugs on her, she could have something else bothering her such as pasty butt, or something in the bedding is irritating her. What type of bedding are you using, and do the chicks have plenty of room. Are they too hot or too cold? I would try to distract her by sprinkling some feed crumbles around her feet to peck at, make sure she is drinking water, and you could also apply some menthol ointment (Ben Gay) or some Vicks to her bottom. Pasty butt is constipation brought on by dehydration, and with daily gentle washing and a drop of vegetable oil on the vent opening, it usually subsides in a week.

Be cautious using DE or Sevin on a chick. Both can affect the lungs, and Sevin is probably too harsh for chicks. If you need something for lice or mites later on, then permethrin dust or spray is probably a better choice.

 

[ScottyTerrier]

Thank you for the reply! I would have never considere that. I hatched the chickes myself . They are tiny and are in a large rubber made tub, they have plenty of room. The hot side runs a little hot but they have a lot of room to go to the cool side. I have been using just plain paper towel so far as bedding.

I did not see mites so maybe it could be pasty butt. I will cease DE application and treat it as pasty butt. I think I will try to put a smaller light bulb in for the brooder.

 

[Eggcessive]

A thermometer is always good to place on the floor of the brooder under the light. Keep the temperature there 90-95 degrees F the first week, and decrease by 5 degrees each week. There should always be a cooler spot to escape to if they are too warm. There can be temperature fluctuations throughout the day and night when inside the house. Good luck, and let us know how they are getting along.

 

[ScottyTerrier]

I have measures the temperature on the hot side and yes it was like 116 I know it's way too hot. Thing is when they move away from the light the temp drop quick so I thought it would be ok, the ducklings stay away from under the light. For some reason the silkies don't seem to want to use the cool side of their brooder

So I put a 40 watt in to replace the 70 watt I had in before. Temps seem to stay at 95 on the hot side. I whiped the one with the bad pasty butt with warm water and the other few that seemed to have the beginning of pasty butt. Then I rubbed their vent area with mineral oil which is gentle and doesn't rot.

Let's hope all that improved their poor behinds

 

[Eggcessive]

Make sure to clean the vents with warm soapy water, and dry them off. A Qtip just barely inserted with oil may help. Don't use mineral oil since that is a harsh laxative. Olive oil, vegetable oil are better.

 

[ScottyTerrier]

So far it looks like this treatment is working. I switched to Bengay menthol as soon as I went to the store a couple days ago. The buff-ish colored chicks butt is looking better. I had one chick that I suspect is a polish mix that had a big poo chunk stuck yesterday but I got that off. Otherwise I haven't seen any one getting it worse. Will continue to monitor and update. Really appreciate the help eggcessive!