I was in the coop collecting eggs, and I saw Fat Black getting out of her chosen nest box. It looked like she was walking funny, so I went out and scooped her up to investigate. I brought her up to the house to take a closer look. Turns out she wasn't walking funny. It just looked that way, because she's missing 75% of her feathers, most of which were on her stomach, legs, and rear end.
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| Missing lots of wing feathers |
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| Tail feathers |
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| Tummy and breast feathers |
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| Fat Black explosion! |
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| It's not a glamourous business. |
It's that time of year. Not a great time for it, but that's nature. Poor girl must be so cold. After she was released, I'm pretty sure that she went right back to her warm box.
This is a funny picture for you: Ghost Black. She must have moved while I took the picture, and you can see through her head to the wall. Spooky!
I've been lucky, I'm finding plenty of feathers but everyone still looks intact. Just in case, I added a heat lamp to the coop at night. Actually I did that to help keep egg production up during these short days. While I was at the Royal I stopped by a big commercial poultry booth and she told me that their barns are so warm during the winter, they can wear t-shirts in them.
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