Is my girl molting? I couldn't find any evidence of mites, her skin is nice and healthy and doesn't appear to be irriated at all.
Molting?
Another view...this is on her belly, she's not missing feathers anywhere else...I have no roosters.
She is only loosing feathers on her belly? How is she acting otherwise? When a hen gets broody they will pluck out the feathers on their bellies. Is she acting broody? Most molting hens will loose feathers on their backs and wings and necks as well, they will look downright scrappy.
MsKatt,
I have I Fine looking Rooster his Name is Peepers and in the reacent Hot & Humid past weeks he has been preening his feathers out and plucking Old feathers out as well.
Although, he is not molting he is removing tattered feathers and older feathers on his own. He Still looks Good & is Not looking Poor.
It is natural for chickens to molt and shead feathers for New Feathers to come in many "New Chicken Owners " will think something is wrong with their Prize Chickens due to this Natural occurance but it is very normal. no need to medicate them .
Do Keep a check on your Birds for unusual happenings to them or their conditions .
Good Luck & itf you need some Help visit the Sticky link at the top of the fourm .
and there are several good ones there.
Sarge
Here is Peepers
She certainly could be....how old is she? Has she stopped laying? There are a few times when chickens are likely to molt.
One is the juvenile molt, when they are about 4 months old and are ready to produce their adult plumage. But they don't usually go bald with that.
The other is a post broody molt, where the stress of brooding and raising the chicks seem to trigger molting in some hens. Broody hens will also lose the feathers on their bellies, like smedgekle's noted.
The most likely is a seasonal molt...which is usually in the autumn and triggered by changing light levels. This is usually the one where the bird may go almost naked. Technically, in layers, you want a fast molt, because they won't lay while molting so the faster they get it over the better. I have seen pictures of perfectly healthy seasonal molting birds that had lost almost all their feathers. It is very alarming, but not a bad thing. Different birds will do it at different times, but fall is the most common.
This message was edited Aug 4, 2010 12:52 PM
This message was edited Aug 4, 2010 1:26 PM
Cat,
I agree I have seen this in Many birds.
Sarge
She doesn't appear to be broody, I'll keep an eye on her. Thanks for the responses!
We have had some that haven't appeared to be broody, but have started to thin out the belly feathers and then not long after that we find them on the nest trying to sit on eggs.
Right now I have a Naken Neck/Nankin Bantam cross who just decided to go broody on someone else's eggs....she has so few feathers she looks like a joke rubber chicken stretched out over the nest. She is such a sweetie though.
I think we need a picture of that!
I have a white broody hen who is all black on her belly feathers. My husband thinks it's mildew from sitting on eggs for so long. She keeps stepping on the eggs and killing the babies. By accident I'm sure. We stuck more fertilized eggs under her and she's still sitting. It's over a month now. She does get out and run around brifly once a day and takes a dirt bath under the pine tree. She eats then goes back to sitting on eggs. I think she has 4 eggs left. We have one other hen sitting but she hasn't broken any of her eggs so we might get some babies soon.
Should I be worried about her being moldy?
The only mold I have heard of on chickens is favus and it is white. They do get very hot and "sweaty" on their bellies when they are sitting and they usually lose a lot of feathers from that area. It might be some sort of fungus, but it also might just be dirt that is staining the damp feathers when she takes dust baths.
I hope it is just dirt. I don't know how to get her to stop stepping on her eggs and killing her babies. While she was off the nest my husband put a new nesting box and clean straw in it and put the eggs in it. The other one was STINKY. Nothing like rotting eggs with little corpses inside of them to stink up the place. Totally gross.
You could always give her a bath in Dawn Dish Soap and check her feathers out to see nothing bad is happening to her the overheating of the eggs and low hatch rate could be that she is getting upset that none of her eggs have hatched and she is cracking them to see what is wrong. I think it is time to switch hens after this try with these eggs .
Sarge
If she is not a careful mother, I wouldn't let her brood anymore if it were me. I don't think that is something you can get her to stop... it's instinct. Either they are good moms or not..
Are you sure they were stepped on? Moms do reject their babiez...
Her feathers may have grown back black if she plucked them when she went broody..?
We don't know she stepped on them. We didn't see her. We just see the broken eggs in her nest with dead babies inside. She is a big bird. She's the biggest bird we have. We just figured she didn't stand up carefully and stood on the eggs and broke them. She has been faithful about sitting on them day and night. I just don't know. We didn't get a good look at her underside either. I was mowing when she came out for a romp and bath and I noticed she was all black underneath. She's a snow white bird. Why would she reject the eggs but continue to sit on them ??
There are several larger breeds that are known to have a problem with breaking the eggs they are brooding. They don't reject them, they are just too large and clumsy not to break them.
I also had a smaller pullet, a Nankin/Penedesenca cross who broke open some eggs another bird was brooding which killed the chicks....but then she laid some herself and she and the other bird brooded them together and when they hatched, she was an excellent mother.
We finally kicked Whitey off the nest. She'd been sitting a month or more. The eggs were broken and we felt she'd had enough. She's happily out in the yard eating up a storm.
Our little golden comet who has been sitting finally started hatching out babies today. We got her up long enough to get 4 babies and put them in our small coop under the red heat lamp with the baby waterer and small trough with starter mash. Two eggs were cracking so we think more are coming. She's back sitting on them. There were four not cracked yet. We will check on her later tonight and in the morning.
My question is...................do you separate the momma hen from her babies right away or do you think we should put her in the small coop with her babies after they are all hatched out? I really am not sure what to do. These hens were mail ordered and came as one day old chicks so we've never had babies hatch out here.
Will she go back to laying eggs after we take away her babies? Will she be mad? Do you think she will hear her babies in the little coop and know they are hers?
Why did you take her babies?Let her keep them and see what kind of mother she will be,if she is a bad mom then take them and put them in a booder with a heat lamp.If she is in with other chickens I would move her and the chicks after they all hatch in with the other chicks.
Well, she's in a common coop with the other hens and I guessed the babies needed food and water which is not in this pen. It's outside the barn in a fenced in run area. I was afraid if she tried to go out there with the babies in tow the other hens might attack the babies. I don't really have another area to put her where she and the babies can be by themselves. I figured they'd be warmer under the heat lamp. I got all these hens to begin with as day old chicks in the mail so I figured these new babies didn't really need a mother. I don't know. I could put her in the little coop with the babies I guess after they all hatch out. Will she be happy being cooped up with them for 6 weeks? Will she get too hot under the heat lamps? I just haven't thought this all out very well I guess.
You don`t need the heat lamp once mama is in there with them,she will keep them warm and show them how to eat and drink.I keep my silkie babies with mama and away from adults for two weeks then lt her take them out and believe me noone comes near those babies When you let them be with the other adults just keep a close eye for awhile to make sure mama is doing her job of protecting them if not then you will have to put them back.
Update...............well we have more babies. We have 9 so far. One more egg to hatch. We put mama in the smaller enclosed coop with the babies and put the one unhatched egg in there with her as well. If it doesn't hatch by tomorrow we'll toss it as it might not be fertilized. This coop was built to hold 8 mature hens so it's plenty big enough for mama and babies for a while.
When we decide to open the door and let her lead her babies out of there how do we keep feeding them the chicken starter food and keep the other birds from eating their food? Will it hurt to keep the red heat lamp on in there anyway? I don't mind leaving it on unless you think it might make mama too hot. We could swap it out for a regular lightbulb.
I read somewhere that if you have two broody hens sitting too close to each other one will sabotage the other's eggs by breaking them so that may be what happened to Whitey's eggs. Poor thing. She is still sitting on an empty nest. I don't know what to do with her. We keep throwing her off but she keeps getting back on. How do you get her to give up?
I'll post a pic we took this morning.
One more with the backside of mama. She's a golden comet
They are so cute!They say golden comets don`t go broody very often,I was also told that the black sexlinks don`t go broody but one of mine did this summer so I got baby chicks to put under her and took out the golf balls that she was sitting on and she was a proud mama and a very good one.You really don`t need the heat lamp she will keep them warm if she is sitting a lot so they can get under her.If you can put a pen around the coop that they are in she will take them out and then inside a lot during the day so they can feed,at least thats what my silkies do.This is what I did with the black sexlink as I had no other coops to put them in.I had a large dog crate so I put that out in the big run with the big chickens and fenced it in so they others could not get at them,this worked great and when they were a bit older I took away the fence and left the crate as it had there food and water in it.Then when mom was ready she took them into the big coop one night and that was the end of the dog crate,the chicks by then were mostly on there own as mom stops taking care of them when they are about 6 to 8 weeks old.
This was the first night in the big coop,the buffs still were trying to sit under mom one is under her and she is hanging onto a `ee` to keep from falling and the other three buffs are waiting there to do the same it was funny to watch but I felt bad for the babies,they still stick togather and roost togather now.
LOL that is so cute how that great big baby is under mama's wing. The coop mine are in now is set up off the floor on cement blocks and it is inside an indoor pen inside the barn. It is the place all the hens sleep at night and lay their eggs. The new mama and babies are totally enclosed in the coop. We'll swap out the heat lamp for a regular light bulb today. THey need some light because it is very dark inside the coop. THe coop in the barn has no outside window in it.
All 9 babies and mama are doing well this morning. The last egg never hatched so we're flinging it today. Maybe it wasn't fertilized.
What are the breed of the babies?
I have no idea. My neighbor down the road just gave me a big bucket of fertilized eggs and I stuck them under my hen and she sat on them till they hatched. Maybe when they are bigger I'll be able to tell what breed they resemble. One has a sort of skunk stripe on the back of his head. Very weird. :)
OOOOH! Another guessing game?
We took the last egg away from mama. She wasn't sitting on it and we took it down by the pond and hubby broke it open. There was a dead baby in there. No idea why it died. We have 9 very alive ones though which is great.
I observed mama picking up some food in her beak and gently setting it down on the floor of the coop...............almost like she was trying to show the babies to eat. They know how though. They are eating and drinking on their own. I guess she thinks she has to show them what to do. I'm glad someone talked me into putting her in with the babies. It was a good idea. She actually walked up the gang plank into the coop by herself. She knew her babies were in there. Her nesting box was right next to the little coop. We closed the door so she has complete privacy with the babies. She has plenty of food and water and we keep checking on them to be sure they haven't knocked over the waterer.
I had to laugh. Hubby bought what he thought was a baby waterer at Tractor Supply but said the water kept falling out of it. :) It turned out to be for food not water. Looks just like the waterer though. It's better than the trough feeder we had because they can't stand on it and poop in their food. We went back and got a metal waterer that you screw a fruit jar into. That works great. It's heavier than the all plastic ones so it isn't as tippy.
I think the mother hens also try to show the babies what is good to eat by picking it up and making noises. The chicks will peck at just about everything....but I have even seen them jump up and take the food that the mother is offering from her beak.
A lot less work for you when the mama has to take care of them
The coop they are in is inside the coop in the barn where the other birds lay their eggs and sleep at night. I know they can hear the mama hen clucking and the baby birds cheeping. Will the fact they are all together but separate make the transition of the little ones into the flock easier? Also, at what age should I let mama and the babies out of the coop?
Hubby caught the barn cats taking an interest in that cheeping and ran them out of the coop where they had come in to investigate. I know I can't let the babies free range till they are big enough the cats won't bother them.