Our 11 pullets are 3 months old, obviously not laying yet, and there are feathers everywhere in their run & coop (LOTS of feathers). The feathers I see in the run are all sizes, soft fluffy ones, and longer tail feathers. I also notice loose feathers in the yard too. They don't have any bald spots and still have their tails. I haven't caught them picking at each other. They free range for about 4-5 hours a day. When they are first let out of their run, I've seen them drop feathers as they run flapping their wings. Could they be molting at this young age? I didn't think chickens molted until they were older and laying. They are still on starter/grow crumbles. Besides the crumbles, they free range (we still have some green grass & green weeds here where we live), and I give them occasional treats of apple or tomato, etc. Could they be losing feathers because of their diet or is this their first molt?
You know, I think it must be our weather. I have half of my hens moulting now. They didn't moult before. Most were born 4/25/08 so that makes them 8.5 months old. Crazy huh? I hope they get it out of their system and start laying. None of my leghorns laid today but I got 6 brown eggs and 2 cream colored eggs from my EEs.
I asked this last summer when my sussexes etc were about that same age. It was gently pointed out to me by some kind souls that if chickens kept the same little feathers they had as two-month-olds clear thru into adulthood, they would look pretty stupid <g> Indeed mine grew back bigger-sized feathers. So I am going to vote for growth-related feather replacement, dunno whether that *technically* gets called a molt or not. Have fun, Pat
Thank you both for your help. I just found some great information online and it does like like pullets have 3 partial molts before becoming an adult and one of them is between 12 & 16 weeks. http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/cps/rde/dpi/hs.xsl/27_2709_ENA_HTML.htm
