molting

[cedarpondfarm]

I haven\'t seen this before but maybe someone else has.  

I fed my hens and roosters game bird breeder during Jan, Feb, March while I was gathering hatching eggs.  Then I switched them back to laying pellets.  All did fine on both feeds.  High fertility, good hatches, laying well.  

Three weeks ago I decided to let everyone out at the same time instead of rotating turnout.  The doors are open during the day so they come in and out of each others pens at will.  When the adult birds started eating non-medicated starter/grower (18%) which they love, they started dropping feathers like crazy.  Looks like I will get an early molt this year.

Is it coincidence or feed related?




   

[jeeperspeepers-r4us]

I think it must be a coincidence,
I have been feeding high protein feed 20%
and I wish the would molt ,no luck yet

[Mike Gilbert]

Sudden changes can precipitate the molt, especially in warm weather.   It could be a combination of the feed and the other changes you mentioned.

[Beth C]

Can hot weather alone, especially a sudden shift from cold to hot, do it? Mine all went into molt crazy early - like the end of May, beginning of June. But we had an unusually cold winter, then it immediately got HOT and stayed that way. There\'s never much of a spring here, but this year it was cold later than usual, then over about a 3 week period it snapped to hot - more dramatic than usual even for here.

[Mike Gilbert]

Sure, and I think your key word was \"sudden.\"   But it is possible there could have been other factors involved as well.