Poorly chicken

[Slippersandacuppa]

Help please! We rescued five chickens last year, three of them are ex-battery hens, roughly four or five years old. They are free range during the day and have all stopped laying. When I let them all out yesterday morning, one of the ex-battery hens had lost quite a few feathers. She seems to have the little new ones poking through underneath so I put it down to moulting. Same again this morning though, she's lost even more, isn't hanging around with the other girls, instead preferring to stay inside the coop, and her tail is pointing down :( There's no evidence of mites, although I'll check again tonight when it's dark. If she was just moulting, she wouldn't look so miserable, would she? I just feel so sorry for her. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

I give my fading chickens those nutri drops that you can get from any poultry supplier. They aren't cheap though.

It tends to either save them or I feel they were goners anyway. I hope she's ok xx

Thank you very much, it's a whole other world, isn't it! Her tails up and she's eating and running around a bit more so maybe it was just a particularly painful moulting day. Bless her. DD (2 yrs) looked at her today and said she looks sad. Thanks for the tip, I'll get some tomorrow.

When one of mine was moulting she was very sad. She kept herself away from the others and it really took it out of her. She's absolutely fine now. Her moult lasted a long time so I was pretty worried. She likes the layers pellets mixed with warm water to form a sort of mash so I gave her a ramekin full of that each day mixed with poultry spice - I'd really recommend poultry spice actually. We use it every week or so and they are very perky chickens!