Pigment loss

hogges

Chirping
Jun 16, 2020
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Sorry for duplicate post. I wrote it on the phone, not sure what happened. I don't seem to be able to delete the extra one?
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One of our chickens has lost most pigment in the past 6 weeks. She is also quite ragged looking. She was a medium brown before. She a as FSO hasn’t laid an egg in quite a while.

Here is the back story leading up to this:

We have three Isa Browns left. One was injured badly during a fox attack about 5 months ago. She lost a lot of feathers and couldn’t walk for a week and needed to be hand fed and watered, but very slowly recovered. Then the pecking started, she was constantly attacked by the other two, but resumed laying. Then she decided to become broody, this lasted a good four weeks. A first for us, and what a miserable experience this was for all involved. Now this, after a period of feather loss. She has been sleeping in a nesting box to get away from the other two. I have now blocked it off, because she was basically sleeping in her own poop.

Before the fox attack they all slept next to each other on the highest roost bar with no pecking order that I am aware of.

is she simply molting? She seems reasonably strong but still weighs much less than the others, going back to the fox attack.
 
She is probably very stressed, poor girl.
Broody hens tend to loose feathers and look sickly after sitting, be sure to give her nutrients. My broodies always look like rag dolls after they brood, but if she's not looking better after five or six weeks, there might be a problem.
 

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