Long term feather loss

[sezimodo]

Hi everyone,

We have 3 chickens, just under a year old. For the past 6 months our bovan nera Henrietta has been going bald underneath. The patch is getting bigger with no sign of regrowth. Its not around her vent or tail feathers, although she does seem to be dirty there quite often. It's not sensitive to the touch for her. She's laying daily, is happy and appears healthy. They live in a large pen during the day and get about half an hour free range a day when we get home from work. They eat Fancy feed layers pellets that have 16% protein, with a small amount of corn and dried mealworms for evening snack. There seems to be no sign of eggs on her. They live in an eglu so red mite no problem, but we but mite powder on the nesting bars, nesting box and dust bath weekly. She baths most days when it's dry, but they are adamant on using one of the uncovered parts of the run so don't clean much in the rainy days.

Any one got any ideas? There are signs of small patches coming up near the ears now. They all get on well and there are no signs of pecking. Henrietta has always been jumpy, if you throw food she runs away then comes straight back, and she's very hard to catch as she's afraid of the big people, even though we handled them all daily when we got them. She just doesn't like people.

Thanks, Sarah
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[rick]

Hi sezimodo,
I’ve had a similar problem recently and it was caused by lice but in the absence of those maybe she is rubbing on something regularly like a rough edge of a perch (though that also seems unlikely in an eglu.)
The lice were wiped out but giving them a bath with a dash of mild, unscented plain dog shampoo (the way a hen just stands there to be blow dried always amuses me) and rubbing Vaseline into the nits on the feather shafts. No more lice but, like Henrietta, they don’t seem to be in any hurry to grow new feathers at the moment - maybe its warm enough not to need them.