Moulting or boredom feather pulling

[chickchicks]

Hi I need a little help I think it's coming to moulting time but I'm not sure if it's stress as at the moment she is loving on her own as her sister is brooding with three very young babies .what should I do and what should I look out for

 

[ChicKat]

What a good question.

Don't have any insight to give you--just a bump.

I thought that the broody hen really doesn't care about anything but her eggs, and then her chicks until a certain age...but if you only have 2--then the other one , since they are flock animals--would be ill at ease perhaps. If there was no aggession, perhaps you could recombine now that the eggs are hatched.

I read somewhere that there is a certain order in which feathers are lost in moulting....if you would like I could look for it---either email or pm me, and I will search around, or it may be just as easy to google something like 'order of feather loss in chicken moult' (or is it also molt).

Hope that you get adequate answers.

 

[Ridgerunner]

If you read both these, it might help. There are some sketches.

Mississippi State describes molting
http://msucares.com/poultry/management/poultry_feathers.html

Kansas State feather loss
http://www.ksre.ksu.edu/library/lvstk2/mf2308.pdf

I suspect molting, but you are looking at them and I am not. Last year I had a broody that molted while she was raising her chicks, about a month earlier than the rest of the flock. That was nice since she started laying when the others started their molt.

 

[Red Rosie]

I'm pretty new at raising chickens. We have 12 now (our maximum capacity) of different ages. Some of them seem to have stopped laying. Fortunately the pullets are starting to lay now. I haven't seen an excessive number of feathers laying around. How do I know for sure if the big girls are molting and how long does the molting process take?

 

[ChicKat]

hello-- again..... I saw this in 'unanswered posts' and I thought I had answered so I'm here again. (maybe it was posted in two topics?)

How very neat for Ridgerunner to have chicken molt and raise babies at the same time now that is efficient!!!

My hen started to go 'bald' and it was her facial feathers. She looked good, but strange. Now today, I am noticing that tiny hair-like feathers are starting to grow in beneath her comb.

For Red Rosie, I am pretty sure that there is a variation in the time it takes to molt start-to-finish, and among factors like breed of chicken and living conditions, temperature and length of daylight as well as chicken age--- what they are eating factors into their moulting/molting duration.

 

[chickchicks]

Thank u for the help I'll take a look . Sadly I cannot put them back together yet Betty the one poising feathers seems to want to kill the new babies I did give It a go but she got one and hurt it shuckit and graves by the neck shacking very badly so I'm waiting a little bit will a month old they should be big enough to fend for them selves they are only a week old at the mo still learning! I've been watching betty and can see when she is pruning the feathers just seem to fall out !

 

[ChicKat]

Oh chickchicks,

if it looks like feathers are just falling out, then it is probably moulting time ---

Good thing that you protected the chicks, and that you are able to keep them apart until they can live together peacefully. I can just imagine the terror in the chicken brain to see some fuzzy little unknown thing, and her instinct to kill it to protect herself and the flock from the little invader.

I sure hope it works out for you!!!!!