I think I found a miracle cure for feather picking

[Lacy Blues]

You make it. It's simple and easy. Get a big plastic pail and fill it halfway with warm water, add a couple glugs of ACV with the unfiltered "mother", some feed (whatever you normally feed your chickens), maybe some BOSS and some scratch grain, and mix it well. It should be soupy to begin with. It will absorb the water over the next 24 hours, and begin to ferment. It will start smelling like wine and will be the consistency of oatmeal. You can begin feeding it as soon as it starts sending up tiny bubbles.

Most people feed a half a cup of FF per chicken per day. Mine demand a little more than that. Usually that's all you need to feed them. For more info go look at Beekissed's thread on fermented feed on Feeding and Watering your Flock forum.

PS Do NOT use Feather Fixer in FF! It smells awful when it's fermented! But I'm glad it's working for you , Maurice!

I use feather fixer in my ferment. I also use game bird grower pellets and some whole grains. It doesn't have a chance to get too fowl smelling. I remove some daily to feed out and add in more, fresh and stir it up. Doesn't smell too bad. Maybe that's because of all the other stuff I put in there.

 

[Maurice11]

I had a funny thought (funny to me) instead of fermented feed, why not just beer?

It is a frustrating problem, never met a trained chicken............. seems to be an ongoing problem. So far, so good, with segregation, feather fixer, and lots of dried worms. I await the next problem.

P.S. Thanks for all the information from everyone. I am so glad I am not a 'commercial' chicken/egg laying grower.

 

[azygous]

Beer. Chickens. Yep. I can picture it. On a hot day, they'd be happy to slurp up half your beer, Maurice.

 

[pegm]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.....beer is fermented, so is wine.....I suppose you could use either to start your ff, beer would probably be better tho. Maybe this is the secret to getting them to eat it right off.....

 

[Lacy Blues]

different "ferment"

 

[Sharon Bee]

I can't isolate mine as i don't have the room. They are inside for the winter but they have a run area inside the carriage house as well.

They all seem to have feathers missing but browns are worse. I haven't been adding the ACV lately maybe that has something to do with it.

I'm taking down one of the roosts too. So they won't be sitting so close to each other at night.

 

[Lacy Blues]

Maybe you can just add more space between the roosts? Enough that they cannot reach over and pluck out a feather when they see him?

 

[Sharon Bee]

Why don't the feed manufacturers put in a higher percentage of protein? That seems to be the culprit? Lack of protein?

 

[azygous]

Grains are naturally limited to what percentage of protein a manufacturer can squeeze out of them. Because of this, I've bought chick starter and flock grower instead of layer feed because those are higher in protein. I'm still using these higher protein feeds and serving the hens oyster shell on the side to make up for not getting a layer ration.

One of the beautiful advantages of fermented feed is that the fermentation process makes even more protein from the feed available for the chickens to absorb. This is probably one of the biggest reasons why Flo appears to be "cured" of her feather picking. She's now getting the maximum protein available, and if this is the reason she's no longer picking feathers, it must mean that her problem was probably caused by getting too little protein.

Manufacturers formulate feed to serve a broad market, and it's adequate for most avian needs. It's up to each of us individually to figure out how to get the additional nutrition that a few special members of our flocks indicate they might need. Fermenting feed is a cheap, easy way to squeeze out a little more nutrients to meet those needs.

 

[Sharon Bee]

Ok I just made my FF recipe for the first time. I put one container 750 g of layer pellet food and a container of scratch and a cottage cheese container of BOSS in a half pail of hot water and two glugs of ACV. Mixed it up. Watery atm. I'm hoping to stop feather eating.

My chickens are eating each others feathers. Getting worse. Before they only had bare bums. Now there are bare patches on their backs and necks are getting scraggly. Mostly browns are the worst.

I bought a liquid to rub on them which is a natural compound. I only tried it on the two worst brown ones as it is RED! OMG. Why would this liquid be the colour of blood? It's supposed to stop feather picking. Just called Stop Pick liquid for vet. purposes.