Rooster w/no tail feathers..

[Big Red's Mom]

My Rooster is over 2 years old. He is a RIR....and the only roo in the coop. It started when a dog attacked several birds and the rooster lost several tail feathers. Some pulled out and most broken.....His hens pulled a good amount of his feather around his behind out....

He is finishing up on his molt. He only had one long tail feather until a few days ago and it is gone too.

My question is will he grow them back.....I think he and his hens are pulling the new feathers out before they have a change to come in......

They have plenty of scratch and protein......Their eggs are strong and the older hens are filling back in from their molt.......

My DH and son just think he is sooooo funny looking...He is so big...with no tail feathers

 

[patandchickens]

If you look at his tail area up close, you should be able to see if there are good numbers of feathers starting to grow in normally, or if there are signs (blood, broken pinfeathers) that they are being pecked off.

It may just take a while -- when mine have molted their tailfeathers it seems to take a looong time before they have their tail back, but I think it is jsut b/c the feathers have to get pretty long before they look obviously 'tail-y'.

Some additional protein in the diet might not be a bad idea.

It is of course possible that someone's pulling them out -- I had that last year and the only solution I found was to send the culprit over to a different pen where she became low hen on the food chain, took up as the roo's favorite concubine to protect her from the other hens, and no pecking since then

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[RAREROO]

This is kinda funny because one of my Barred Rock roosters is the same way, except he wasn't attacked by dogs, it just normal for a molt. He had one tail feather left for a while and now he has none at all, but the rest of his new feathers look great. I think this is the normal time of year for the roos to be molting as all of mine are and don't worry, I'm sure they will grow back, you can probably see the new feathers coming in like patandchickens said. If you do have trouble with the other chickens pecking them out, try to take him out for a while until they grow back.

Here is a pic of him, I've been wanting to take a pic of him and this gave me a good excuse to take one so I just had to run out and get one. He just looks so funny to me. Kinda like an Araucana. LOL

 

[gritsar]

My Lil' Bit has not been able to get her tailfeathers in since her molt because the others are picking them out as fast as she can grow them. Because I didn't want to resort to pine tar this time, I made her a saddle that's extra long in the back so it drapes over her tail "nub". The feathers are coming in nicely under it.
If you put a saddle on your roo, you MUST promise to take pics!

 

[Big Red's Mom]

I had thought of putting a saddle on him.........I was just afraid the girls would laugh at him and give him a complex......

My husband already thinks he is sooooooooooooooooo ugly.....