{"id":10921,"date":"2015-05-04T19:01:13","date_gmt":"2015-05-04T19:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=10921"},"modified":"2015-05-04T19:01:13","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T19:01:13","slug":"there-was-some-feather-pulling-but-i-think-its-passed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=10921","title":{"rendered":"There was some feather pulling but I think it’s passed"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had to get all of that into the title as I didn’t want to set off alarm bells. Stress is definitely one of the factors in feather pulling. This year, Mid March, Honey struggled at the start of laying. She laid one egg with no shell then another with a thin shell. She looked quite poorly while this was happening and then we noticed she was pulling a few feathers from bottoms.<\/p>\n

My heart sank as I wondered if this habit was going to be a problem among the flock once more when I had made so many changes to stop this happening. Honey’s eggs were fine after that and we didn’t see any more feather pulling so I breathed a sigh of relief.<\/p>\n

Then Amber died and during the days after she went we noticed Honey pulling feathers from bottoms again. Again my heart sank and I thought how unfair it seemed that once again a death amongst my flock seemed to spark this behaviour.<\/p>\n

We saw her try to pluck feathers from Topaz and Topaz would round on her and give her the warning peck to stay away. We saw her pull feathers from Peaches and Barley and their bottoms began to show small bare patches. I thought it odd that she was targeting the top and bottom girls.<\/p>\n

When Steve asked me how Honey was since Amber had gone I told him about this and said that I hoped it would pass. He said I should post about it because if it passed it would reassure others and if it didn’t I would have to post about it anyway.<\/p>\n

Happily this only continued for about four days and we haven’t seen it happening since so I believe it has passed. I believe it was the loss Honey felt at Amber going that sparked this, as they had been together since they were chicks.<\/p>\n

Today I took photos of bottoms to demonstrate this and the fact that it was difficult to see it in a photo shows that it isn’t actually that bad and I was grateful that it was only bottoms and not heads and necks like before. I also think that as Pepper and Dotty were so closely bonded this allowed Pepper to pull feathers from Dotty’s neck but Honey isn’t close enough to any of the other flock members for them to allow this behaviour.<\/p>\n

\"Sparkle<\/a>

Sparkle and Toffee have lovely fluffy bottoms<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Emerald<\/a>

Emerald also has a fluffy bottom<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Topaz<\/a>

Topaz has a bare patch on the left side of her bottom<\/p><\/div>\n

See the little pink patch showing on the left.<\/p>\n

\"Peaches<\/a>

Peaches also has a a bare patch on the left side of her bottom<\/p><\/div>\n

Again you can just see a pink patch.<\/p>\n

\"Barley<\/a>

Barley has missing feathers behind her wing<\/p><\/div>\n

Again it is the left side of her bottom under her wing. It’s odd that all three girls have missing feathers from the left side, I wonder if this has some relevance, such as being an easier side to sneak up on perhaps.<\/p>\n

I have to apologise to the girls for trying to sneak up behind them and photograph their bottoms but I feel I must tell every story.<\/p>\n

I will be keeping a close eye on them but thankfully I do believe this phase has passed for now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had to get all of that into the title as I didn’t want to set off alarm bells. Stress is definitely one of the factors in feather pulling. This year, Mid March, Honey struggled at the start of laying. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10921"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10952,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10921\/revisions\/10952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}