Loss of feathers...

[kburen]

Not sure if this is the correct place or not to post and I apologize if it is not. All of my chickens who have been together for their 10 months of life are now missing feathers right at their tail/butt. I THINK it's the fact that I have 2 roosters and there were only 3 females to begin with...we recently lost 1 to a dog, so now there are 2 hens and 2 roos. But even the roos both are missing feathers now! It's worse on the girls, with skin visible, where as with the roos it's just fuzz instead of feathers. Could this be something else that we need to treat? We have just introduced 2 new hens to them, they are about 3 months old....This is their 3rd or 4th time meeting and this time seems to be going well....One of the roos showed his dominance and then just left them alone. The 4 have gone back into the coop since I gave them fresh water and filled their feed, but the new girls are still pecking around and checking out the run. If it's something I need to treat I want to go ahead and do it before it hurts the new girls too. I've looked and don't see any mites, but I think I'll get some sevin dust to spread when I clean out the coop next time just in case. Do I need to give up and rehome one of my roosters?

I have someone who will take him, but I'm fond of one and my husband is rather fond of the other so it'll be hard either way!

 

[ryanhodapp]

its the roo's.
you only need one roo for 10 hens, but I have seen 2 roos for 10 hens and their backsides have lots of feathers missing.
If the roo's arent fighting and you love your roo's, might want to buy those hen aprons.

 

[peepblessed]

They're about the right age for the first molt. Could that be it?

 

[kburen]

Quote:
I guess it's possible, but it doesn't look like it with the girls...I can see skin on them....On the roos it's mostly fluff like I would expect to see with a molt (if they molt like the cockatiels & parrot that I've had before anyway). I'm leaning towards it being the roos. Darn.....