Please help!

[sdchickgirl]

Hi everyone! These are the legs of my beautiful, twenty two month old Cochin, Savannah. She is the top of the pecking order and has actually never molted. Several weeks ago she started what I felt was a molt. She hasn't lost a significant amount except for recently her neck feathers are falling out. She's been losing feathers on her feet a lot, causing the pin feathers to bleed and the others would pick at them, making her feet worse. Her legs look like she has scaly mite, however they are not crusty at all, just raised. None of my other girls, as far as I can tell, have mites, and I have treated their coop and them for mites extensively but it seems to make no difference to Savannah's legs. She hasn't laid for a while either, she stopped around the time this all started, and I have another girl, an Americana only a little younger than her who's never molted starting her first one. Please help, I don't know what's wrong with my girl's legs! Is it best persistent mites or could it be something else?

 

[Ravynscroft]

Have you tried actually coating her legs with vaseline or Nu Stock? Scaley leg mites cause raised scales, yes, but I don't think they get crusty until they've been infested for a length of time... treating the coop and even the birds won't kill off leg mites, they need to be smothered...

 

[sdchickgirl]

Yes, that's what I meant by treated. I coated their legs with Vaseline multiple times over the course of two weeks and scrubbed their coop.

 

[Ravynscroft]

Ok, just wanted to make sure...

It might be her molt... some molt very slowly while others molt hard and fast, and that would explain her not laying...
How much protein are they getting? Might want to up it for a while to help with feather replacement... occasional handfuls of good quality dry cat food as a treat would do it...
Do you have a small kennel or carrier she could be put in at night in the coop? To keep her with the flock but separated so the others can't pick her pin feathers? That might help as well... that's all I can think of right now...