Why Is My Hen Losing Feathers?

A hen going bald is one of the most common worries in poultry keeping, and most of the time it is completely normal. But not always, and the difference matters.

The quickest way to work out which you have is not to look at the bird as a whole. It is to look at where the feathers have gone. Each cause has its own pattern, and the pattern tells you the answer before you have picked the bird up.

Start with where the bare patch is

Where the feathers are missing	Most likely cause
Neck and head first, then everywhere, in autumn	Moult
Back and saddle, one or two hens only	A cockerel treading them
Around the vent, and the skin looks red	Mites or lice
Vent and lower back, with bleeding	Feather pecking by other birds
Breastbone, on a hen sitting all day	Broody
Belly, feathers plucked and used in a nest	Broody
Patchy everywhere, bird thin and dull	Illness or poor feed

Work through them in that order. Most hens are the first one.

Moult: the usual answer

Every chicken replaces its feathers once a year, normally in autumn as the day length falls. The old feathers drop and new ones push through. It is entirely normal and needs no treatment.

What it looks like. Feathers loose all over the coop, often starting at the head and neck and working backwards. Bare patches with small hard points pushing through — those are pin feathers, the new ones still in their sheaths.

How long. Anywhere from three or four weeks in a fast moulter to three months in a slow one. Slow moult often means an older bird.

She will stop laying. This alarms people, and it should not. Growing a whole new coat of feathers takes an enormous amount of protein, and a hen cannot do that and lay at the same time. Laying resumes when the moult finishes.

What helps. Protein. Feathers are about 85 per cent protein, so a hen in heavy moult needs more of it than a layer ration provides. Switch to a higher-protein feed for the duration, or add mealworms, sunflower hearts, or scrambled egg.

What does not help. Handling her. Pin feathers have a blood supply and are genuinely painful if knocked, so a moulting hen who does not want to be picked up should be left alone.

The unhelpful truth about a first moult. Point-of-lay pullets often go through a partial neck moult in their first autumn that looks alarming and is not.

Mites and lice

The one you must not miss, because it does not resolve on its own and the bird suffers.

What it looks like. Feather loss around the vent and under the wings first, with skin that looks red, scabby or dirty. The bird is restless, scratching, reluctant to go into the coop at night, and pale in the comb if the infestation is heavy.

How to check. Red mite does not live on the bird — it lives in the coop and feeds at night. Go out after dark with a torch and look along the underside of the perches and in the joints of the woodwork. If you see movement, or wipe a white cloth along the perch and it comes away with red-brown smears, that is red mite. In daylight, look for grey ash-like deposits in the crevices.

Northern fowl mite and lice do live on the bird. Part the feathers around the vent and look at the skin: lice are pale and move quickly, and their eggs form hard grey clumps at the base of the feather shafts.

What to do. Treat the birds and the coop together — treating one and not the other achieves nothing.

Strip the coop completely, burn or bin the bedding, and scrub it out. Get into every joint and crevice, because that is where they live. Treat the structure with a licensed poultry mite product, and repeat after seven days to catch anything that hatched after the first treatment.

For the birds, use a licensed poultry treatment and follow the instructions on egg withdrawal if there is one. Diatomaceous earth in the dust bath helps as a preventative and is not a cure for an established infestation.

Prevent it. Red mite thrives in warm weather and in coops with lots of crevices. Check the perches weekly in summer. Smooth removable perches are far easier to keep clean than fixed rough ones.

Telling moult from mites when it is not obvious

These two account for most cases and are occasionally confused, particularly in late summer when both are possible. Four things separate them.

The feathers on the floor. A moulting bird drops whole, intact feathers with a clean quill. Mite damage leaves broken, chewed and ragged ones, and far fewer of them relative to the bare skin.

The skin. Moulting skin is pale, clean and dotted with pin feathers coming through. Mite-damaged skin is red, sore, sometimes scabbed, and there are no pins.

The behaviour at dusk. A moulting hen goes to roost normally. A bird with red mite hesitates at the pop-hole, or roosts somewhere other than her usual perch, because the perch is where the mites are. That reluctance is one of the most reliable signs there is.

The comb. Moult leaves the comb its normal colour, though often smaller and paler because she has stopped laying. A heavy mite burden drains blood and turns the comb genuinely pale and floppy, and that bird needs treating urgently.

If you are unsure, do the torch test after dark. It takes two minutes and settles it.

A cockerel doing the damage

If you have a cockerel and one or two hens are bald across the back and saddle while the rest are fine, this is almost certainly it.

He grips the hen's back with his feet when he treads her, and his favourites take the wear. The skin is usually intact — it is feather loss rather than injury — but it can break, and a bare back in cold or wet weather is a genuine problem.

What to do. The real answer is the ratio. One cockerel to eight or ten hens spreads the attention; one to three does not. Either add hens or remove the cockerel.

In the meantime, a hen saddle — a fabric apron that sits over her back — protects the skin and lets the feathers regrow. They look ridiculous and they work.

Check his spurs and claws too. Long sharp ones do far more damage than blunt ones.

Feather pecking by the other hens

Different from a cockerel, and more serious, because it escalates.

What it looks like. Damage around the vent and lower back, often with blood. Once there is blood, other birds are drawn to it, and it can turn into serious injury very quickly.

Act immediately. Separate any bird that is bleeding. Chickens will keep going at a wound.

Why it starts. Almost always one of four things: too little space, boredom, too little protein, or too much light.

Crowding is the commonest. Birds need room in the coop and in the run, and a flock kept too tight will find something to do with each other.

Boredom is next. Hens confined with nothing to occupy them peck at whatever is available. Hang a cabbage, throw down a forkful of straw to scratch through, give them a dust bath, give them something to stand on.

Protein shortage drives birds to eat feathers, which are protein. A flock on scratch grain rather than a proper layer ration is a common cause.

Very bright light, particularly in a confined coop, raises pecking. Dimmer is calmer.

What not to do. Anti-peck sprays treat the symptom and buy a little time. They do not fix the cause, and the behaviour returns.

Broody

A hen who has decided to sit will pluck feathers from her own breast and belly, and use them to line the nest. Bare skin against the eggs transfers heat better, so she is doing it deliberately.

She will also lose feathers from the breastbone through sitting on it all day.

Nothing needs treating. Either let her sit, or break the broodiness if you do not want chicks, and the feathers return at the next moult.

The less common causes

Poor feed. Feathers are protein. A flock on kitchen scraps and grain, without a proper ration, will have poor feathering along with pale combs and thin condition.

Stress. A move, a fox scare, a change in the flock or a spell of extreme weather can trigger a partial moult out of season.

Old age. Hens past three or four moult more slowly and regrow less thickly. That is just age.

Rubbing. A hen who squeezes through the same gap in a fence twice a day will wear a bald patch on exactly that spot. Worth a look at the run before assuming anything medical.

Illness. Feather loss with weight loss, a pale comb, diarrhoea or lethargy is a sick bird rather than a feather problem, and needs looking at as such.

What a normal feather actually does

Worth a paragraph, because it explains why a bald hen matters beyond looking sorry for herself.

Feathers are the bird's entire weatherproofing and insulation. The outer ones shed rain; the fluffy down beneath traps a layer of warm air. A hen with a bare back in November is genuinely cold and genuinely wet, in a way a fully feathered one is not.

They are also almost pure keratin — the same protein as a fingernail — and a full set is a substantial fraction of the bird's body protein. Growing a new one is expensive, which is why a moulting hen stops laying and why every cause on this page comes back, eventually, to whether she is getting enough protein.

And feathers do not repair. A damaged feather stays damaged until it is moulted out and replaced. So a bare patch caused in June will not fill in properly until the autumn moult, however well you fix the cause. That is not failure; it is how the bird works.

Helping the regrowth

Once the cause is dealt with, four things speed the feathers back.

Protein, and the right kind. Feathers are heavy in the sulphur-containing amino acids, methionine and cystine, which ordinary grain is short of. A proper layer or moulting ration is formulated for this; scratch corn is not. If you supplement, sunflower hearts, mealworms, fish-based feeds and scrambled egg all carry what is needed.

Leave her alone. Emerging pin feathers carry a blood supply and hurt when knocked. Handling, catching and crowding all set the process back.

Keep her warm and dry. Not heated — chickens do not need that — but out of driving rain and wind while she has no coat. A dry, draught-free coop matters more in a moult than at any other time.

Reduce the competition. A bird at the bottom of the order who is being kept off the feeder will not have the protein to regrow. A second feeder in a different place costs nothing and often solves it.

Expect three to six weeks from the pin feathers appearing to a full coat, longer in an older bird or a cold spell.

When to worry

Get help if the skin is broken and bleeding, if the bird is thin or lethargic as well as bald, if the comb has gone pale, if several birds are affected at once outside the moulting season, or if it is not improving after a fortnight of doing the obvious things.

A moulting hen in autumn who is otherwise bright, eating and behaving normally needs nothing but more protein and to be left alone.

The short version

Look at where the feathers are missing. Autumn, starting at the neck, spreading everywhere, with pin feathers coming through — moult, and she needs more protein.

Around the vent with red scabby skin — check the perches after dark with a torch for mites, and treat the coop and the birds together.

Across the back on one or two hens only — the cockerel. Fix the ratio, and fit a saddle in the meantime.

Vent and lower back with blood — feather pecking. Separate the bleeding bird now, then deal with space, boredom and protein.