Quote: So here's the thing.... I sit and watch my 26 girls & 3 Peking ducks.... and what I see are nice fluffy healthy looking butt feathers.... They look like little feather dusters -- they are so perfectly feathered in the butt area. Can one be so infested and the others not? They pick at each others poop!
I am going to separate the one bird I have concern for and de-worm her. Because it won't hurt her to do so.... but in regard to stress - the action of separation might stress her more than any stress she has had to this point in her life. She was naked as a jay-bird this winter. And WV did have a tough winter. I put a heat lamp in the coop just for her since she was the one with the severest molt. She took advantage of the heat lamp and stayed in front of it day and night. And was the last to start getting her feathering back. It seems that by Nov. most all my flock is in a molt to the point that I have had to buy eggs for the holidays in the past. Then by Feb. they start ramping up to full speed. By March the girls are back in full production. (I keep egg laying records and I can tell you on what day the egg laying switch was turned on - they are that sensitive to the light cycle) Not this chick. She stayed stuck in her molt. I will be cooking her eggs everyday and I might even give her oatmeal with cayenne pepper to see if that will stimulate her in what ever way she needs stimulated to get out of her funk.
The statement made above about something stopping the process in mid point, is what I am curious about. Have others experienced that and what was the outcome??? The only correlation that is prominent is the very severe molt. This thread has been read by 81 people. And very few have experienced this or they simply chose not to respond. So.... has anyone had a chicken go through a really severe molt and the feathering process stopped in mid process and what was the outcome? I'm waiting for someone to tell me that one bird in 26 can be the canary in the mine -- the indicator of something unseen in all the others. Or that one bird in 26 can be wildly infected with worms while others go about with healthy guts.... Keep in mind, I never said she was declining through these last months. She is not declining. She molted. She began feathering. She stopped feathering. That's it.
When she was going tbrough it we were having warm temps all through the night and were still in severe drought so not a drop of rain. I assumed it was just her before seeing this thread but this shows it really is something that can happen with at least some frequency.
