How do I stop feather picking?

[Just My Cluck]

I have several different breeds of chickens but my Silver Penciled Rocks, both the roos and the hens, are picking their feathers out!! I did what one of my chicken books suggested and mixed vinegar and water and rubbed it on them....BUT, they seemed to like it. It made them pick even more. HELP!!! I don't know what to do

 

[Miss Lydia]

you could try giving them more protein, thats usually what they are after when feather picking, you can get a product called Blue-kote it will disguise the places where feathers are missing if they are doing it to each other. also there is something called pick no more I believe, don't really know anything about it but you can probably get it at the feed store too. But try adding some extra protein a couple times a week Blk oil sunflower seeds is good, meal worms, scrambled eggs yogurt. good quality canned salmon. I add vinegar to all my animals drinking water so I'd say no wonder the vinegar didn't work they like the taste.

 

[azygous]

Feather-picking is one of the most exasperating problems to try to conquer. It's a form of cannibalism, and the chickens eat feathers because they crave the rich blood and protein that make up the feathers. It's important to try to halt the behavior before it becomes a habit. Everyone knows how hard it is to try to break chickens of a bad habit.

Feeding a higher protein feed like flock raiser helps prevent this, as well as adding BOSS to their daily ration. But to stop the feather picking, you really have to hit them with a lot of high quality protein, such as salmon and tuna.

Miss Lydia's suggestion to mask the pink, bare spots with Blu-kote is an excellent one. The chickens are drawn to those pink areas, and left exposed, they'll just keep plucking out any new, rich-in-blood pin feathers, and you will have bald chickens until the next molt.

I have one persistent feather-picker, and she's finally responding to daily feedings of canned tuna. I just let her eat as much at one feeding per day as she wants to eat. She seems to know her own protein needs and I quit trying to measure it out and guess if it was enough or not.

Also, the victims of her predations are growing new feathers, due in equal parts to painting the bare spots with purple Blu-kote and her finally getting the protein she needs.

By the way, Pick-no-more is also purple, but it doesn't stay on for even most of one day. It also smells very offensive, and putting it on the neck or head areas of a feather-picking victim is punishing to the victim, and has dubious value in protecting them. Blu-kote is odorless, but stains the skin and lasts much longer and the poor victim is unaware of it.