The bantys join in the moult

The last two mornings when I have opened up the coop to clean I found a mass of soft little orange banty feathers as well as dominique feathers. The dominique feathers are on their side of the coop and the bantys feathers are in and under the nest box. They sleep perched on the edge of the nest box and it seems they have joined in the moult. The odd thing is that they don’t look any different but like Pepper and Dotty as the bantys move around the odd feather will flutter from them.

It seems that the pure breeds have a sudden moult whereas Bluebell, a hybrid, doesn’t appear to be moulting.

I am giving them extra protein with a bit of poultry spice mixed in. This is a powder which says it acts as a nutritional supplement to help birds get quickly over the moult. I thought they could do with any help they can get.

Pepper has pin feathers coming in on her bottom and Dotty has them on her neck. I noticed Pepper had a pinprick sized red spot on her bottom and then I noticed Dotty trying to peck at the pin feathers. I decided to try sudocrem which is an antiseptic healing cream that I have read of other chicken keepers using. It is supposed to deter the pecking.

Pepper has pin feathers on her bottom

We decided to do both Pepper and Dotty’s bottom and Dotty’s neck. I really want the girls to keep their feathers. I picked up and held the girls while my husband rubbed the cream on.

Pepper has sudocrem on her bottom

Pepper didn’t seem at all bothered by this but Dotty didn’t like it all. She immediately started to preen it off.

Dotty removing the cream

What a sorry sight

I felt so sorry for Dotty. She worked so hard to get rid of the cream and had to break off to go and lay her egg, shouted very loudly to let me know she had laid, then returned to frantically preening the cream off. It wasn’t long before she had completely removed it from her bottom.

This made it a waste of time and I felt a bit concerned that she may have swallowed some of the cream. The only good thing is, that she can’t remove it from her neck and it may protect her neck and hopefully it will protect Pepper’s bottom.

I was in our local “pets at home” store yesterday and talked to the vet who saw Treacle when she was unwell. I told him about the feather plucking and he agreed that losing Treacle was probably the trigger. He said it has now become a behavioural problem.

I told him that they do it when dust bathing and roosting together and that it looks like they are grooming each other and enjoying it. He said they probably do enjoy it and that’s why it’s such a hard habit to break. He said they use it as a form of bonding. He also said I could just leave them to it as it won’t hurt them. I said it frustrates me because it spoils their looks. He then said the one glimmer of hope is that with winter coming and the colder weather they may stop doing this.

I really hope this is the case but I won’t be holding my breath. They did stop briefly during our bit of a heat wave when it was too hot to sit together and I am putting them in the coop as the automatic door closes (about 7.00 pm at the moment) so that they don’t sit on the high perch together before bedtime.

Amber has put herself to bed for most of the last week and I am sure as soon as the weather cools the others will too. It’s unusually warm at the moment which is why I think they are staying out later this year.

Last year September was cold and they started going in half way through September but this year it’s much warmer.

I am also hoping that now the bantys have joined in with the moult that they may get their plucked feathers back. I would so love to have a fully feathered flock again.