Hello We have ten hens, 4 are Silver cochins and 6 are Partridge cochins, and all are almost a year old. For a few months now, we have noticed that all of the partridge cochins look like they're in pretty bad shape, with feathers askew and bald spots mainly on the back of the neck and their backs (2 in particular have very bad bald spots). They have not made much progress growing back within months, one is starting to recover but the other one looks just the same, no feather regrowth at all. the grey cochins look beautiful and their feathers are perfect. We have never witnessed any aggressive mounting behavior from the other hens, nor have we found clumps of feathers in the coop or the yard (they are free range on weekends). They are fed Dumor Pultry Layer Crumble for Egg Laying Hens, and are free to eat what they find in the yard, and we often feed them fruits and (vegetable) kitchen scraps. Also worth mentioning is their egg shells, we usually get between 7-9 eggs per day, but there is always one or two in the batch with incredibly weak or already broken shells. These weak eggs are often coated in a gross yellow liquid as well. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!
Can you post pictures of the feather loss and the eggs? It could be feather picking/eating. If you are not finding many feathers, then some of your girls may be plucking their flockmates and eating the feathers (not enough protein). You can try upping their protein intake by offering a feather fixer feed, an all flock/flock raiser feed, tuna, salmon, meats or even hard boiled/scrambled eggs. Also if you aren't doing so, offer oyster shell free choice to help with calcium intake, this may help with the thin egg shells. Sometimes a vitamin/nutritional deficiency can cause weak shells as well, so you can also try adding poultry vitamins to their water to see if that helps. https://www.backyardchickens.com/a/common-egg-quality-problems https://poultrykeeper.com/egg-problems/soft-thin-or-missing-egg-shells/ http://www.the-chicken-chick.com/2013/08/for-strong-eggshells-size-matters.html
