I'm at a loss, advice for red featherless skin

[oakhavenmama]

From my spying on them there is no evidence that anyone is pulling feathers, including herself and no breast blister. She looks exactly the same as she has for months now and continues to eat and drink fine. She's driving me up the wall!

How did this turn out? My Big Red has a long red streak on her breast and now it goes up over her crop. Her feathers are gone on either side of her breast bone all the way down to her tummy. The article that justplainbatty posted was very interesting to me, so today I changed my hens perch to a 2 x 2 (really 1.5 inches) and tried to round the corners. Tomorrow I will put rubber tape around it. Just wondering if you ever found something that helped your girl. Thank you!

 

[HeidiN]

This looks just like what's going on with my barred rock, except mine is way worse. I'm at a loss of what to do for her.

 

[oakhavenmama]

This looks just like what's going on with my barred rock, except mine is way worse. I'm at a loss of what to do for her.

I have the same problem with my Big Red. I took her to the vet four days ago, she had bumble foot in addition to this problem. The vet said she had never seen anything like this, she thought Red had gotten burned, but that's not it, it's been going on for months. She gave Red a treatment for mites, so that's not it either. Did you read justplainbetty's article? Do you think yours could be laying on her perch and causing the redness? I switched out my 2 X 4 perch last night for a 2 X 2 with rounded corners and will watch.

I also have suspicion that it could be something in the feed. What do you think?

Thanks for any and all comments or suggestions. I love my Red and want her to get better. Let's get your barred rock better too!

 

[HeidiN]

We have a 2x4 perch, a 1x2, and round natural ones. She chooses either the round or the 1x2. But last night she was in the nest box, so I brought her in the garage in a cage. She also has an injured leg from the rooster we had for 2 weeks and 2 days (I'm still trying to catch up on sleep lost when he was here ). Her leg is slowly getting better, but not totally there yet. And on top of that, she's feather picked. Our poor girls look Terrible! I got rid of the pickers and the rooster a couple weeks ago. I guess I was hoping to see improvement faster after removing the problem birds.

 

[Wyorp Rock]

How did this turn out? My Big Red has a long red streak on her breast and now it goes up over her crop. Her feathers are gone on either side of her breast bone all the way down to her tummy. The article that justplainbatty posted was very interesting to me, so today I changed my hens perch to a 2 x 2 (really 1.5 inches) and tried to round the corners. Tomorrow I will put rubber tape around it. Just wondering if you ever found something that helped your girl. Thank you!

This thread is a bit old and the OP has not been on since 2015. If you'd like to post some photos and give us more details about housing/feed and anything else you would like to share, I'm sure others will be happy to chime in with some suggestions.

Feather loss on the breast area can be due to feathers being plucked out by other chickens and/or the hen herself. Is she broody? Feathers can also be rubbed of from roosting and getting into/out of nesting boxes.

Bare bottoms can also be from feather picking, being rubbed off by something, etc. Hens that are heavy with extra fat or swelling/fluid in the abdomen also seem to have some loss from their bottoms dragging the ground.

 

[HeidiN]

I did post a ne thread when I realized how old this post was. Interesting article about perches though. I'm going to get some rubber tape to wrap perches.