Unsure what's happening

[lindsay750]

I have 14 chickens, someone is laying the occasional soft shell egg, then another lays on it, gets covered in yuk, they then get all depressed in their cleaning! So we washed a chicken (just the underneath!h the other day, and she seems so much happier. But in doing this we noticed a few in our flock have no feathers underneath?! Is this normal?! Why (apart from brodiness) would they do this?!

Thank you!

 

[Alaskan]

I have 14 chickens, someone is laying the occasional soft shell egg, then another lays on it, gets covered in yuk, they then get all depressed in their cleaning! So we washed a chicken (just the underneath!h the other day, and she seems so much happier. But in doing this we noticed a few in our flock have no feathers underneath?! Is this normal?! Why (apart from brodiness) would they do this?!

Thank you!

Your other option is:

bugs, like mites. You want to look very closely at the chicken since mites are super tiny, and so very hard to see. Some kinds of mites don't live on the bird, but hide on the perch, then crawl onto the bird at night. In that case, you need to look the bird over closely and check for dark spots, which would be tiny little scabs on the birds, and blood spots.

It is possible that it is molting, but then it would be patchy thin or bald areas all over, not just the underneath.

 

[Acefit411]

I have the same problem, but with only 3 of my 14 having bald spots.... There skin is sometimes very red and this has been going on since April!!! There is NO lice or mites on the birds, the coop has been cleaned, vacuumed, washed and scrubbed 3 times since April.

I thought after going crazy about, why would only certain birds reveal this issue if it were mites or lice? Wouldn't they all be missing feathers and showing red skin? It's so bazaar to me...

I know that I have some chicken picking / pecking going on, they free range 4-8 hours a day . I'm not sure what else I can do. I hope they don't freeze to death this winter....

~a