Scraggly chicken

[WyoChick1]

Hi. I mentioned in another post that a few of my hens are showing some "rooster damage"-- they have feathers missing on their backs, right above their tails. But this one Easter Egger looks raggedy all over? We noticed it about a month ago and wondered if she was molting, but she would have only be 11 months old, and none of the other hens look like this. Should we be concerned? She acts normal.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Looks like a molt - if you can see a lot of pin feathers, or tiny feathers growing back in in the formerly bare spots (which looks to be the case, at least the the neck) then it's a molt

 

[WyoChick1]

Thanks. At first we did see pin feathers, but not so much now. Is that possible for such a young bird to molt? In January? We did have a warm fall, so that kind of makes sense I guess. But none of the others are doing it, which also makes sense because they are not yet a year old. I have 3 Easter Eggers from the same group and she's the only one that looks like this. I hope it is just molting though. Again, she acts totally normal.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Chickens go through a few juvenile molts as they grow. Some can have early molts very similar to adult molts, it's just not the norm. She does appear to be re-feathering so as long as she's eating and behaving normally or close to normal and no one's picking on her, she should look more or less like her old self in a few weeks.