Bleeding 'pins'

[minskey]

No I'm not saying naughty words

One of my ex-bats is just re-growing her feathers and is at the purple quill/pin stage [hope that makes sense] het tail quill/pins keep bleading, she doesn't seem to mind, eating and drinking and beating the lower ranked hens up as usual.

I wondered whay her's are bleeding, the other didn't, she is not getting pecked. Even though I collared her to day and sprayed her rump purple to disguise the bright red of blood. The rest of her pins are turning into lovely feathers, is it because tail feathers are so large?

[Bramble-Poultry]

the pin feathers are the feather shafts rolled up inside the keratin shell as it erupts from the skin. this new feather is gorged full of blood vessels whilst it develops. If it gets knocked, scratched or pecked, the protective keratin will break prematurely and can lead to the pin feather bleeding.

It usually isnt something to worry about, however, sometimes they can bleed heavily and the safest way to deal with that is to stop the flow of blood to the feather shaft. They way to do this is to quickly pluck the pin feather. As soon as the feather is plucked, the bllod vessel supplying it is broken and seals over immediately, stopping any further blood flow.

If she is definately not getting pecked, then she is either preening too hard and breaking them herself - a thing that can get addictive and become a vice - or she is catching them on something, like a rough bit of wood in the nest box, or a bit of wire sticking out. that sort of thing.

Hope all works out well

Mike

[minskey]

Mornin' Bramble-Poultry, she is a clumsy little so and so, loves to start a good scrap where its hackles up and feet and claws in! She went to bed with a purple bum yesterday and this morning the bleeding has stopped and a little bit of feather is peeping through the shaft. Did make me worry when I saw all that blood yesteday though.

[tlck9]

I have had the same problem with one of my ex batts, they seem to be a bit of a beacon for the others. On of my other ex batt seems to peck at her feathers, but not aggresively, just like a monkey picked fleas off another monkey, but is meaning that they bleed and are not growing so quick

In fact, her chest is clear of any feather like growth, is there any way to try and encourage growth?

[FB.]

A long time a go, I used to keep a variety of birds.

I bought-in a few young birds for breeding purposes, from another enthusiast.

The following season, a lot of my young birds left the nest with missing/damaged/bleeding tail and wing primary feathers, although the extent of the problem varied considerably between different "blood lines".
Many of the badly affected birds never learned to fly as a result.
The parents of these affected birds showed signs of excessive preening and itching, but didn't lose many feathers.

Eventually, I traced the problem to a parasitic mite that burrows into the soft-ish shafts of large feathers as they emerge from the skin - and the mite sucks the blood out of the base of the feather. If a mite infestation is heavy, there are so many holes in the feather shaft that the feathers break off, but the blood flow continues - so they bleed.

My solution was to cease breeding for one season and isolate any birds with symptoms and any that had excessive itching in their tail area.
Those birds were treated with anti-mite spray in the affected areas.

The following season, all yound birds were sprayed with anti-mite, to pre-empt any further attacks.

The treatment worked, but it took a few years to eradicate.

[Bramble-Poultry]

if you are really worried that the new feathers are being nipped off before they get a chance to grow, put a "hen jumper" on the bird. this will not only keep oven ready birds warm, but allow the pin feathers to break through without getting nipped

we use them on really bad ex-batts when they come in for a few weeks until they settle