Plucker mama

[XP_2600]

I got a lot of pluckers females in birds, in most cases the chicks coming out of the nest but with missed feathers, but some of them seems on a bad condition cause of heavily plucking from the mother, so is there any recommendations from you to make these females stop plucking ? some local breeders adviced me to use Aloe vera on chicks bodies saying that doing so preventing the mother from plucking, any ideas ?

[CrazyBirdLady]

Some hens pluck because they feel they need more nest material. Others pluck the chicks because they want them out of the box to start an new clutch. While others, seem to just pluck because they do; perhaps because they were plucked as chicks.

Unless they are bloodying the chicks, they chicks will be fine and all feathers will come back in by 6-8 weeks old.

You can always offer a lot of extra nesting materials, but that can lead mother to believe that she should start another clutch. I've had to pull chicks before because a mother plucked to the point of bleeding and i've also removed mothers to stop the plucking. by 3-4 weeks old, the father is doing the feeding of the chicks and it works out well. mom gets to go back to be with Dad after the chicks are weaned and hopefully the break away from the nestbox has made her stop thinking about laying more eggs right away.