What's Up With These Butts????

[katiegirl0225]

I'm so glad to have discovered this community of chicken lovers. I'm hoping someone can help me out with a little mystery. Some of my hens have nasty butts while others have beautiful fluffy feather butts. I've attached some pics.

Facts that may prove helpful:
1. Bedding in boxes is pine shavings and floor of coop is straw. Coop is kept tidy. Coop is dusted with diatomaceous earth.

2. Food is layer pellets but my kids feed them mealworms and scratch for treats almost daily. They also received hard boiled or scrambled eggs dusted with diatomaceous earth weekly.

3. Water is well water treated with apple cider vinegar.

4. No bloody stool or worms in poo. Poop appears normal.

5. They free range the span of an 1 to 1 1/2 acres...they're adventurous.

6. We cattle farm and they often scratch through cow poop out in pasture.

7. This is mostly happening to my cinnamon queens but one orpington is affected as well. Hens are about 2 years old.

Thanks much! Edited to add photos

 

[Criticalicious]

DE is relatively useless. I would double check that kids aren't feeding too many treats, which could put the chickens off their layer feed, causing nutritional imbalances. Maybe hold off all treats for a week and see if anything improves. ACV will only help if it's the kind with the mother for the probiotics.

Is there any bad odor coming from the vent to suggest vent gleet?

I currently have one layer whose lost the top half of her fluffy butt for no particular reason, vent is clean, and so I'm curious if someone has suggestions for you as to what's going on. I'm starting to wonder if it's mites or a similar parasite but I use Poultry Dust in the coop and I haven't found any evidence of parasites. One site I read, said that sometimes they simply lose these feathers and don't always grow them back - which I found odd.

 

[katiegirl0225]

DE is relatively useless. I would double check that kids aren't feeding too many treats, which could put the chickens off their layer feed, causing nutritional imbalances. Maybe hold off all treats for a week and see if anything improves. ACV will only help if it's the kind with the mother for the probiotics.

Is there any bad odor coming from the vent to suggest vent gleet?

I currently have one layer whose lost the top half of her fluffy butt for no particular reason, vent is clean, and so I'm curious if someone has suggestions for you as to what's going on. I'm starting to wonder if it's mites or a similar parasite but I use Poultry Dust in the coop and I haven't found any evidence of parasites. One site I read, said that sometimes they simply lose these feathers and don't always grow them back - which I found odd.

Thanks so much for the response. I have decided to put the treats up to more closely monitor the kiddos. There is no odor coming from them. On a warm day I'm going to bath them and see if they stay clean after getting them cleaned up. Hopefully nothing is wrong with them.