Chicken molting and eating herself?! Graphic photos ⚠

[ILuvChooks]

My wyandotte hen started shedding feathers a week ago, quite severely. I was out of state for a while and when I came back she had nearly fully lost her fluffy feathers and was bleeding. I thought it might be other hens pecking at her but when I separated her I realised she was pecking at the blood, making it worse. This morning I woke up to hear her screaming and saw her tugging at her bare tail skin and try to rip it out. She kept on tasting the blood. I tried putting a soothing ointment on her wounds along with a bandage but she kept on trying to get another taste of the blood, it was like she desperately needed it, even though she had food and water. She even mistakenly bit my arm since it was infront of her skin, and it nearly bled. I was able to put a few strong bandages on but an hour later I came and saw the bandage gone and she had eaten she had eaten the ointment off her tail and it was even more bloody and it looked like CHUNKS had been pulled out. Now she keeps on frantically running around and she yanks in her tail as if she was snatching something off it, she has blood all over her beak and she's extremely aggressive when I try to touch it. I NEED SOME ADVICE PLEASE. I'm extremely worried she might lose too much blood or it'll make her sick.

 

[dawg53]

Personally, I would cull her. She will continue the picking no matter what you put on her.

 

[NatJ]

If you want to try again, maybe bandage it up AND give her some actual meat to eat (maybe hamburger because it's easy to eat? Or a chunk of roast, so she has to pull hard to get bites off?) There's a chance that some of the nutrients in the meat may help her, and the distraction might keep her from picking at herself.

But by now, there's a good chance she will keep picking just because something feels/looks wrong about her tail area. If you cannot keep her from picking at it, I agree with @dawg53 that culling her is probably the best option (better than letting her kill herself, which will probably happen at some point if this continues.)

 

[theoldchick]

Self-mutilation is a serious problem to deal with. Your hen needs to wear an e-collar to stop her from pecking herself. Give her a bath in cat flea shampoo, rinse well, dry her off, isolate her in her own dog carrier. She needs antibiotics, pain medication and high protein diet. An avian vet can help you and your chicken.

 

[Chicken poppy]

How is she doing?

 

[ILuvChooks]

We unfortunately had to give her away to be culled. She had finally recovered, even all her feathers grew back. But while she was roaming around, I don't know what got into her, but she ripped out her freshly grown feathers until her bare skin was showing and started again. It happened 2-3 times and her skin had also recovered from the stage where it was beginning to rot from being out in the open.
I'd had been soaking her in water with antibacterials and even applying creams before bandaging it, but she never became normal after the first time it happened.
She must've had some sort of deficiency or phycological issue that made her ruin herself again and again.

 

[NatJ]

Thank you for updating
But that's a sad ending

Yes, it seems likely that something else was going on, that was causing her to act that way. Since it was not something you could figure out and fix, culling was kinder than letting her keep hurting herself over and over.

 

[Chicken poppy]

I’m so sorry to hear that, it sounds like you did the right thing. Poor girl. I can only imagine what she must have been going through.