Feather Issue

Backyard Poultry

Feathers Disappear from Hens' Backs

Well, are you ready to hear about our next chicken woe? As I noted in my last seres, this issue involves Puzzle. To be expected (though we didn’t know it), our rooster was gradually tearing out our hens’ back feathers in the process of mounting them. At first we thought this was some kind of new feather coloring on our hens (the first we called the “granny hen”—yes, we were really that ignorant!), but some research showed differently. Here you can see the missing feathers on our hens’ backs (white down feathers are showing through). It can be a lot worse than this—get down to exposed raw skin, and I’ll let your imaginations do the rest!