Improper growth of the train feathers.

[laescondida]

Hi,
I have a farm with free range peafowl, and I noticed that some of my mature peacocks grew crooked feathers on its tails. The shafts seem to be opened with like dried blood inside. I´ve seen 3 peacocks like this out of more than 20 males we have.
I am thinking they may be missing something in their diet, we feed them with chicken feed, grains and well lots of greens and insects they can find since they are free range. What can I do??

 

[DylansMom]

Hi,
I have a farm with free range peafowl, and I noticed that some of my mature peacocks grew crooked feathers on its tails. The shafts seem to be opened with like dried blood inside. I´ve seen 3 peacocks like this out of more than 20 males we have.
I am thinking they may be missing something in their diet, we feed them with chicken feed, grains and well lots of greens and insects they can find since they are free range. What can I do??


That looks really familiar to me. I have 1 loud pied male who looks like that every spring, if it is the same, then the feathers are not growing abnormally, they just are not preening the (keratin?) sheath off as the feathers grow in. Think of it like the wrapper on a drinking straw., as the feathers get longer the birds should spend time each day picking this off, my male is lazy and doesn't bother. At first I thought it might be a dietary/vitamin deficiency but he is the only one out of 15 males who does this. Every spring I get my husband to catch him and hold him so I can brush his tail with a wire slicker brush( the kind you use on a dog or cat). I brush gently away from the body following the direction the feather grows, just enough to break up this sheath, it looks like it is snowing under him. It takes about 10 mins to get to every feather, but once you have it pretty well broken up, the rest will fall out as time goes by. His feathers will look fine by summer. If we don't do it, they look just awful and they must be heavier because they just drag on the ground. If you can catch one again, try running a fingernail down along the feather shaft and see if it is a sheath that breaks apart. I really think that is what it is.

 

[zazouse]

Very interesting read. thanks for sharing this info just in case

 

[DylansMom]

Very interesting read. thanks for sharing this info just in case

Just in case, here are some pics of our males feathers before we ran the wire slicker brush down over them to break up the sheath. On the dark feathers the sheath looks white, on the white feathers it looks darker like the OP's pics. My poor boy, he behaves so well for this, once we catch him he just kinda goes limp and lets us do the preening for him. Lazy boy!

 

[zazouse]