Hi! I went out of town for three weeks and my daughter took care of our chickens while I was away. When I came back though some of them were missing feathers and look kind of shabby. One in particular is missing feathers on her neck and head and has a bare patch that seems inflamed/has a hard bump.
The ones that look most threadbare are the three top hens. They are missing feathers on their neck and heads. The other chickens look healthy and fine. I'm including a photo of the most shabby looking one (a Sex Link) and the Rhode Island Red's head to show what they look like. I've never seen them mercilessly peck at each other in ways that would cause this kind of feather loss.
We have a large half-covered run area (I posted photos and dimensions of it on here before and it checked out) with plenty of water and food. It's been hotter than usual here in Southern California, but our chickens have never looked this threadbare. There's a skunk and an opossum I've seen down in the coop area, but there's no evidence that they've been in the coop (I understand that no coop is 100% predator-proof, but we've tried really hard, with hardware cloth on top of chain link fencing, to make sure it would be very difficult for a predator to get in. Some of the hens seem to be molting because there are more dropped feathers than usual, but even during a normal molt they don't look this rugged.
They eat layer crumble from our local feed store and get lots of fruit, vegetables and scrambled eggs (once a week). They get some black soldier fly larva and scratch (usually just to draw them into the coop if they need to be locked up early).
Thanks for any advice you can give as to what's going on!
The ones that look most threadbare are the three top hens. They are missing feathers on their neck and heads. The other chickens look healthy and fine. I'm including a photo of the most shabby looking one (a Sex Link) and the Rhode Island Red's head to show what they look like. I've never seen them mercilessly peck at each other in ways that would cause this kind of feather loss.
We have a large half-covered run area (I posted photos and dimensions of it on here before and it checked out) with plenty of water and food. It's been hotter than usual here in Southern California, but our chickens have never looked this threadbare. There's a skunk and an opossum I've seen down in the coop area, but there's no evidence that they've been in the coop (I understand that no coop is 100% predator-proof, but we've tried really hard, with hardware cloth on top of chain link fencing, to make sure it would be very difficult for a predator to get in. Some of the hens seem to be molting because there are more dropped feathers than usual, but even during a normal molt they don't look this rugged.
They eat layer crumble from our local feed store and get lots of fruit, vegetables and scrambled eggs (once a week). They get some black soldier fly larva and scratch (usually just to draw them into the coop if they need to be locked up early).
Thanks for any advice you can give as to what's going on!
. I saw no evidence of lice or mites. 
