Loosing feathers already

[NCclucking]

I have a mixed flock of 5 week old egg layers I went to feed this morning and I noticed a few feathers, is this normal to loose feathers this early

 

[Isaac 0]

Yep,They go through quite a bit of juvenile molts until they get there adult feathers in.

 

[mishb]

Thanks for posting this question. Mine lose feathers and I was starting to worry. I have one that just started laying and is 21 weeks and has lost quite a few.

 

[Isaac 0]

As long as they dont have mites or lice and are being feed a correct nutritional diet i think they will be fine.

 

[debid]

They start to molt as soon as they finish feathering. It can be that young for a fast feathering chick.

 

[Ridgerunner]

They go through juvenile molts as they outgrow their feathers. Usually it's two full molts before adult size but there can be partial molts. It can happen at different ages. Chickens are just not consistent in much of anything they do. It's always a good idea to check for mites and lice, but it's probably perfectly normal.

If you see a chick eat a feather floating around, that's normal too. Picking a feather off of another chicken to eat is not normal but if the feathers fall out by themselves it's perfectly all right for the chickens to eat them.

 

[Pat Mcaffee]

This is definitely very normal. They are starting to lose their cute chick fluff and gaining some more adult-like feathers. They do become pretty ugly and awkward during this stage, however.

 

[centrarchid]

I would like to add my observations. The first set of flight feathers are already being swapped out by three to five weeks. The replacement of the second set is well underway by 10 weeks and the third set is being swapped out sometime after 15 weeks. The feathers coming in at fifteen have general appearance of adult feathers but also being swapped out before the birds are 5 months old.

The first set is chick feathering and the subsequent three sets are juvenile feathering.

Body feathers seem to be offset where the first set is not fully in until second set of flight feathers start coming in.