Chickens loosing a lot of feathers?

[Mel1]

Can anyone help me?

My flock of chickens - 6 marans, 1 Burford and 1 buff Orpington are all loosing their feathers.
It is a gradual lost from rear end to neck. They all have it. They all have red bottoms with no feathers.

No sign of mites, lice etc the are a outside on the grass in a run. I have tried upping their protein levels with mealworms - to no effect.

Egg laying superb.

Any ideas?

I would be very grateful.....

Mel

 

[Marigold]

HimMel, and welcome to the Forum.
How old are your birds? It's normal for chickens to moult their feathers at about this time of the year, when the breeding season is coming to an end, in order to grow new feathers to take them through the winter and the following year. Birds hatched this year ro ably won't moout until next .autumn, as they will have done a juvenile moult at around 12- 14 weeks after hatching and got fresh adult plumage at that stage.
However, normally in moult they will stop laying, because re growing all that plumage takes a lot of protein and they can't manage to do two jobs at the sme time. So I'm a bit puzzled by the fact that they're still lying fit to bust.
Is there any feather pecking going on that you have observed? Chickens do often eat feathers shed by their companions as these are high in protein, especially the tender little ones, and this can become a habit when they learn to actually peck them out of a friends' bum, rather than just picking them up when they've fallen out naturally.
Are you absolutely sure that they're free from parasites? Northern Fowl Mite is becoming more common, and the mites are so tiny they're not easy to see, but would get passed from bird to bird when perching together at night. Have you checked for mites in the house, by going down after dark and wipung the underside of the perches with a clean white tissue, to find out if there's any redmite blood squashed on to it?
When were they last wormed with Flubenvet?