New Rescue Chicken Mum... with many questions!!!

[Laura Lou]

Hi everyone!
My Name is Laura, and my family and I are from a place near Melbourne, Australia!
I have a couple of questions, but first I should explain how we came to get our girls
We recently adopted 3 Isa Brown chickens that are 12 months old. A lady rescued 300 of them from a 'free range' farm, as they escaped from being gassed Apparently when they reach 12 months of age the egg size becomes too unpredictable to supply the supermarkets, so they gas and kill them I was pretty shocked by this, but happy we could give a couple a loving home!

The 2 girls (mostly our eldest) decided to name them after the Royal Family, so we have Duchess, Charlotte and Elizabeth.

We have had them about 2 weeks now, they have a very large coupe to roam around in but we also let them out to roam our big backyard a couple of times a day.

When we got them they were a bit shaken and messy. Duchess has most of her feathers, just growing back a few tail ones and she seems to be the leader of the group. Charlotte is missing a few feathers underneath her tail and has a very pooey bum, i asked at the pet shop about this and the girl told me that they usually clean themselves, but as of yet she hasn't, so i think im going to have to give her a bath. My first question is, whats the best way to do this and should i just use water not to irritate her skin or is there some sort of chicken shampoo (haha) out there?

The 3rd chicken, Elizabeth is the one that i am most worried about. She was missing many feathers, many are gone from along her back, between her wings, she has 3 tail feathers, and missing most of them all under her tail to down to between her legs. I did expect that because of their traumatic experience and moving house etc, that it would take some time for them to adjust, so i thought i would give them a little while to see if they would sort themselves out. After a few days i was happy to see Elizabeth started growing her feathers back (well the little stumpy parts) BUT the last couple of days i noticed they were going missing again and when they were roaming the backyard yesterday i noticed Duchess was pecking them out and had made her bleed! Today again while they were roaming, Both Duchess and Charlotte were pecking at her re-growing feathers so tonight i have separated her from the other 2, as i quickly read some info on what to do.
Is this what i should be doing? If so how long should i keep her separated from the for? Until her feathers grow back? Should i still let her roam around with them during the day but keep a close eye on behavior? Is there something i should be doing to make the others less bossy? Any info, or pointing me to some reading would be very much appreciated!

I also noticed that the outer hard part of the feathers are still in her skin and have left sort of little holes (very creepy looking) and her skin looks very red. Will this sort itself out after she stops getting attacked? Should i go and get some cream or anything for her? Should i add some extra protein to her diet while she grows everything back?

Thank you in advance for any information you may have!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Are they back to laying eggs yet?
What are you feeding them?
I would definitely up the protein till the feather picking ends. Feathers are 92% protein and it takes some good quality protein to grow them. A deficiency is often why they eat them.
Check them over closely for lice and mites.

Adding a little fish or meat scraps to the diet every couple days can help.

The cheapest source of fish here is canned mackerel so that's what I sometimes supplement and to bait my raccoon traps.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Oh, and welcome to BYC.

 

[Laura Lou]

We have had one egg every day, and one 'fart egg' aswell. The egg looks the same each day so I'm thinking there is only one laying.

I am keeping their self feeder full of pellets, some shell grit as the first couple of eggs were a little soft and one broke, also been giving them some kitchen scraps, a couple of corn cobs, and they have been feasting on worms in the back yard as our gardens are full of them at the minute.

That makes so much sense about the protein and eating feathers, will definitely give them some extra! This might be a stupid question, but should the meat be cooked?

I was planning on dusting them for mites and worming them over the weekend, as i dont really know the conditions they came from anyway.

Thanks for the great advice

 

[ChickenCanoe]

It probably doesn't need to be cooked but I cook it. Chickens eat some pretty horrendous things.
When I catch a raccoon or other predator, I skin it and grill it on the fire pit and feed it back to the chickens. Payback.

 

[Laura Lou]

Haha that is great pay back! We don't have Raccoon's here, luckily! We aren't quite close enough to the country to really have to worry about many predators. Maybe only our dog, but i don't think my husband would be too happy about me cooking him up haha

 

[BantamFan4Life]

Welcome to BYC! I'm glad you joined us!

 

[drumstick diva]

Hi Laura, nice to meet you. For feather plucking, you can get "pinless peepers," (put in search box to see what they are like. They prevent the bird from seeing well straight ahead. They can still eat, drink and get along but, their aim will hopefully be off target. There is also a product called "Blue Kote which covers any redness and helps heal,.

Some people put a babies t- shirt on the hen to help her feathers grow back unmolested. I'm not sure if pinless peepers or Blue kote are available in Australia.

You may want to check out "Australia, six states and one funny little island." to see what others in your country are doing. If you could put a wire divider in coop and run with the pecker girls on one side, and your poor plucked hen on the other. She will still feel she is in a flock, and have the opportunity to regrow her feathers.

 

[Laura Lou]

Thank you for the advice! I just googled pinless peepers and had a good little giggle! It looks like there are places i can get them here, if not ill try trusty ebay!
I have plenty of wire left over from building the coupe so i will try and make something up, thats a great idea, i dont want her to get lonely, she seems like a bit of a follower too!

We had another little incident today, which was horrible and a little funny at the same time. Duchess decided to fly over the fence into our neighbor's yard, by the time i heard her little squarks one of the little dogs was nipping at her, i ran to the neighbors front door and we raced out the back, my neighbor informed me that her little dog was so old that she had no teeth left and we saw she had just pulled a few of her feathers out. Which i think she was enjoying as she was just sitting there. She is fine now, has even layed an egg. Gave her a good check over and no blood at all. She wanted to get back to her friends straight away and was back pecking at them within an hour or so.

Being a chicken mum is much more stressful than anticipated.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

You're lucky not to have many predators. Besides dogs and cats, we have raccoon, opossum, fox, coyote, weasel, mink, bobcat, hawks and eagles. Just a short distance southwest of here there are the occasional black bear and mountain lion.