RIR Tail Feather Loss

[crealbilly]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this thread (there are a lot of categories here )

I have 17 RIR hens and 1 RIR roo I noticed over the winter a couple of the hens were getting bald around the tip of the tail. Now two hens have even lost their tail feathers and it seem like it's spreading to some of the other hens but not all of them. Some hens look just fine and so does the roo.

Is this an establishment of peaking order? Or do i have another problem. The hens are just a little over 1 year old. I've also noticed a decrease in egg production over the past two weeks. Some days I won't have but 8 eggs and other days 14 or 15.

Sorry for all the crappy pics but it's rare I mess with these chickens. So when I'm in the coop they get a little panicked.

Thanks you guys/gals are fantastic...

 

[enola]

The chickens that still have all their feathers are the ones doing the pecking. They are making the bald hens miserable. If you remove the bald hens from your flock, the other hens will just start picking on different hens. I think your solution would be get rid of the hens doing the feather picking.

You could try googling pinless peepers. They have worked for my hens.

How big is your coop and run?

 

[SJ]

Scatch can help too as a chickens peck instinctively and scratch gives them a way to get the peck instinct out in a positive way. BOSS is a great scratch. Animal protien in the diet helps also as amino acid defiency gives us all wierd cravings. You can throw BOSS and meal worms to them for a protien rich scratch.

But free birds don't go cannibal or peck backs bald. Crowding is the issue. It may not be so much the number of birds or the breed as it is the individuals in your flock. Cabin fever is real. Things go stir crazy when they lack stimuli. Prison is a punishment for a reason. How else can I put it. You got some good birds locked up with a Hannibal Lecter. And the Hannibal bird is feeling crowded.

 

[crealbilly]

I finally caught mean chicken in the act of pecking the backs of the other hens. Well actually it was 2 mean hens I caught in the act and you guessed it they have all their back and tail feathers. I have both of them isolated from the rest of the flock. Its about time for a big ole pot of angry chicken soup hopefully things will calm down in the chicken yard some now and the hens will grow their feathers back. I ordered heritage RIR but I'm wondering if I might have got a couple production RIR mixed in? Or maybe they are just down right mean... who knows?

 

[sawilliams]

Looks like a pecking issue, could be a space thing. Either the coop/run are to small or there are not enough roosts. The could also be bored. As for eggs, it would help to know how many hens. But overall I don't count an occasional half lay as a drop. I only have 6 hens 3 lay heavy (6-7 a week) and 3 lay medium (4-5 a week) most of the time if I have a half day the next is a max day is just depends on day off rotations.

 

[crealbilly]

Looks like a pecking issue, could be a space thing. Either the coop/run are to small or there are not enough roosts. The could also be bored. As for eggs, it would help to know how many hens. But overall I don't count an occasional half lay as a drop. I only have 6 hens 3 lay heavy (6-7 a week) and 3 lay medium (4-5 a week) most of the time if I have a half day the next is a max day is just depends on day off rotations.

Thanks - I need to butcher 5 anyways - would you recommend the ones that are already started to be plucked? I guess I would think those hens are near the bottom of the pecking order anyways.

 

[sawilliams]

I'd pick males, and meat. Don't worry too much about the pecking order there will always be a top and a bottom. Do make sure they aren't red (like bloody or sore) where they are getting pecked at as that might incourage more pecking. If you don't have any certain ones picked for dinner then it wouldn't hurt to take out the ones they are pecking

 

[crealbilly]

The chickens that still have all their feathers are the ones doing the pecking. They are making the bald hens miserable. If you remove the bald hens from your flock, the other hens will just start picking on different hens. I think your solution would be get rid of the hens doing the feather picking.

You could try googling pinless peepers. They have worked for my hens.

How big is your coop and run?

Those pinnless peepers look a bit crazy - never seen anything like that before. I think I'll just eat a couple of the hens for supper and hopefully that'll solve the problem. I'm not out in the coop enough to see what's going on. I water, and clean and collect eggs everyday - so I'm only out there with them maybe 5 mins a day max.

I have a 6 foot x 8 foot coop with 22 foot of roost space (1x4) about 6 foot off the coop floor and about 1200 square foot of fenced in chicken yard for these 18 chickens.

If I hear you guys right I got a "mean" chicken. I think I know which one it is she tries to peck me at times - maybe I'll have me some mean chicken soup then

 

[aart]

Coop kinda small....so crowding may be part of the problem, regardless of run size.
What and how exactly are you feeding?

 

[shober]

The same thing happened to me! It's a space issue! There are too many chickens for the amount of space that you have. My hens pecked one so bad she had a bloody hole in her back!! Since I couldn't change the size of my coop, I downsized the size of my flock and it cured the pecking right away!