30° and molting!

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Atchurch

Songster
Mar 13, 2023
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My 21 month old girls are going through their very first, adult, molt and it's getting down to 30° tonight for about 4 hours.

Will they be okay? 2 RIRs and 7 BRs.

Then I have 4 babies who are fully feathered out and 14 weeks old. Their coop has 2 small windows above everybody's heads so there's ventilation but not direct drafts, unless they're standing up straight while sleeping.

Will they be okay, too? The babies are already as big as the older girls and they're mixed, BR and RIR.

Thanks in advance!
 
aart said:
Yes, they should be fine.
As long as it's not a hard molt(with lots of skin showing).
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No, they still have a bunch of feathers where just a few bald spots are showing. Some wing skin is showing on one of my Reds and a few saddle spots on the Barred Rocks. Nothing bigger than about a silver dollar, I'd say. And it's been in the 40s most of the day. Is that enough to acclimate them?
 
Atchurch said:
No, they still have a bunch of feathers where just a few bald spots are showing. Some wing skin is showing on one of my Reds and a few saddle spots on the Barred Rocks. Nothing bigger than about a silver dollar, I'd say. And it's been in the 40s most of the day. Is that enough to acclimate them?
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They should be fine.
I had a bird go thru the entire winter with a totally bare back.
 
Mrs. K said:
I have one that I swear has 3 original feathers and dropped the rest. She look like she was rode hard and put away wet. But she is growing new feathers fast.

Even in a hard molt, I think they will be fine at those temperatures.
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Lol! I understand that! We had a roo that we had to cull because he was so mean! But while he was with the girls, one had her saddle feathers gone as soon as they were "of age". I told people that she was either his favorite or she was the slowest! Rode hard? Or something else.
 
Atchurch said:
Lol! I understand that! We had a roo that we had to cull because he was so mean! But while he was with the girls, one had her saddle feathers gone as soon as they were "of age". I told people that she was either his favorite or she was the slowest! Rode hard? Or something else.
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That can be more technique than just overmating, though overmating can also be a contributor. Some hens hang real close to the rooster so they be mated a lot more than the others. Or they just have that personality, can be a lot of reasons.

Another possibility is brittle feathers. Due to a nutrient deficiency (usually because of how the individual hen processes the nutrients) some hens feathers are brittle and break off easily, even if the boy isn't that rough. That's often genetic.

I once had a flock of hatchery-quality chickens that had one rooster and eight hens. Two of those hens became severely barebacked so I ate them. The remaining six girls did not become barebacked though there were only six of them left, not eight. I did not see how I could blame those bare backs solely on the boy.

If you considered him mean then you did right to get rid of him. I'm mentioning this so if you get another rooster and that same hen goes barebacked there may be another possibility to consider, especially if you want to hatch eggs.
 
Ridgerunner said:
That can be more technique than just overmating, though overmating can also be a contributor. Some hens hang real close to the rooster so they be mated a lot more than the others. Or they just have that personality, can be a lot of reasons.

Another possibility is brittle feathers. Due to a nutrient deficiency (usually because of how the individual hen processes the nutrients) some hens feathers are brittle and break off easily, even if the boy isn't that rough. That's often genetic.

I once had a flock of hatchery-quality chickens that had one rooster and eight hens. Two of those hens became severely barebacked so I ate them. The remaining six girls did not become barebacked though there were only six of them left, not eight. I did not see how I could blame those bare backs solely on the boy.

If you considered him mean then you did right to get rid of him. I'm mentioning this so if you get another rooster and that same hen goes barebacked there may be another possibility to consider, especially if you want to hatch eggs.
Click to expand...
Yeah. He was aggressive all the time to people. He got a neighbor lady with his spur once when she brought tomatoes over for them. I had to catch him in another part of the run and separate him just to feed and water them or do health checks.

And the 4 littles are his babies but I don't know which BRs could be their mamas. They all have basically BR coloring with hints of red, except for one girl. She's almost all black and has some red whisps for a collar. They're all beautiful birds! I think I have two boys in them. One is super hard to tell, but I hope I don't have 3 boys!

I can get pics in a little bit.

Too cold for me to get out there right now. Lol!
 

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