After a Hen Has Molted and Feathers Are Back in How Long Before She Starts to Lay Again

If any of your chickens are molting during winter especially in this before than usual winter weather boom, it'due south worrisome on how to intendance for our naked friends.  Pivot feathers are besides an issue that should considered when looking for options to keep our featherless flock members warm.  Take a look at some ideas to help yous decide what is best for your molting flock members during cold weather.

Almost Molting

Mabel'south whole underside from her tail feathers up to her breast are naked

Chickens, for the virtually part, brainstorm serious molting at one year to 18 months of age.  The molts may exist severe as is the case with

my Mabel, a Plymouth Barred Stone, at the moment. Chickens may also have a light molt where less feathers are lost. Any the case, these chickens are more bailiwick to getting common cold and special considerations may be needed for their connected good health.

Many craven keepers enquire why is my craven molting during winter, aren't they supposed to molt towards the end of summer?  Well, yes and no.  Traditionally, chicks were bought in bound to add to the flock. As previously stated, chickens under a year onetime don't usually molt heavily unless a hen has gone broody and stayed on the nest awhile, more on this later. If you acquired leap chicks last year (2013) they may not have begun molting until this summer at 18 months of age which is what you expect.  However, if you got chickens in mid to late summertime, their timing may exist different and their molting may come up later on in the flavour.  We, unfortunately, are experiencing colder weather sooner this yr and this is cause for concern.

What To Do Near Chickens Molting During Winter

When chickens molt during the colder part of the year it is up to their keepers to provide the appropriate living weather to handle the molt.  Many of you are already experiencing the "polar vortex" weather with extreme cold and heavy snow.  You have several options you can use to keep your molting, exposed hens and roosters warm.

How you go on your blank chickens warm and where you provide the warmth is entirely up to you simply here are a few ideas to assistance.

• Bring them in a edifice; your barn, your garage, your basement, your house and provide appropriate food, water and shavings or straw in a cage or crate set up while they regrow their feathers. Make certain to place an quondam towel or coating over their crate at night to provide protection from drafts and assist proceed them warm while they sleep.
• If you live in an surface area that is not encased in the polar vortex, y'all can continue your undressed birds in there coops and runs equally

  

  Alice also wore a saddle during a heavy molt. She has frizzled feathers

  long as yous have wrapped the coops and runs to keep out drafty, cold winds. Information technology is not a adept thought to put heat lamps in your coops, they can crusade FIRES in a blink so delight Exercise Non do this. Instead, provide a radiant heat lamp for your molting chickens if you cannot bring them within. You lot can also throw quondam blankets or towels over coops but leave vents for air circulation to a higher place their heads.

• Additionally, if your roosters or hens are not totally covered in pin feathers you lot can put a craven saddle on to aid provide warmth when they fluff what feathers they have and sit down on their feet. I did this with Mabel and needed aid to put it on. The poor thing is just covered in pivot feathers and it's painful to any chicken for you lot to handle them when they have pin feathers growing out.  They are filled with blood at that phase and until the exposed pins begin to actually feather out, you should non try to selection up, pet or hold your craven unless y'all have no choice.  Mabel has been very common cold, shivering and huddling in the coop then I decided that a saddle might help.

  

  Mabel did not like the saddle, at first, only adjusted to it afterward a while

• Finally, provide actress protein to your developed molting chickens to help them abound back salubrious feathers. Feathers are 85 percent protein1 and so giving them a protein boost is a good idea. The longer the molt, the longer information technology volition take to grow them back.

Other Molting Situations

More about molting! If you have a broody hen that has been "setting" for a while and hatched some chicks, she volition probably get through a molt. Y'all will note that while a hen is brooding, she  may simply become off the nest once, perchance twice a twenty-four hour period to consume, drinkable and poop.  This ways she is not getting the normal nutrition and practice that she commonly would so her body has suffered a bit during this procedure.  She will molt and shed erstwhile feathers.

Additionally, while your chickens begin their serious molts at an older age every bit mentioned above, newly hatched chicks go through featherlike and chick feather molts to grow their adult feathers. This is not usually severe.  Nonetheless,if you have always hatched chicks, y'all will see that they begin to plumage out and grow in real feathers while shedding their babe downward.  Then at about eight-12 weeks they shed some of those feathers to go their adult feathers.  These molts may leave the chicks common cold so providing radiant heat with a brooder warming device similar an Brinsea Eco-Glow  is a good idea if they were hatched in an incubator or information technology'due south too common cold to proceed chicks and their mama exterior. Once more, please do not use a brooder lamp in your coops, they cause fire.

So keep your stark-naked, featherless, molting flock members warm by whatever means yous can provide and think that pivot feathers hurt to be touched, broody hens and chicks may molt, too and keeping anybody warm is in the all-time involvement of their health.

Mabel'south underside is almost bare

 *This post contains chapter links          REFERENCES Damerow,G.            Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens,pgs 199-202.StoreyPublishing, North Adams, MA; 2010.  Damerow, Thousand.            The Chicken Health Handbook, Storey Publishing,Due north Adams, MA; 1994.  Gauthier,J.; Ludlow, R.; Craven Wellness for Dummies, Chs 2 & eight; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, NY; 2013                  

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Source: https://www.communitychickens.com/chickens-molting-winter/

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