Eroding beak in adult Barred Rock - cause unknown, what to do?

[chix in va]

I'm a newbie chicken owner, and got 2 Barred Rocks a couple of months ago. One (Big Twin) is big and robust, and the other (Wee One) is much smaller, and twitchier. I noticed when I got her that her upper beak was shorter then the lower one, and now it is much shorter. It seems to be eroding away. She eats and drinks, but is definitely the lowest in pecking order. She's always seemed a bit slow on the uptake: chicken-challenged? Wee One is first in line when I throw scratch, but isn't at all interested in meal worms. She is very quiet and makes low chirps, whereas Big Twin is constantly chatting! She sits on the nest, but I am fairly certain has never laid an egg, whereas Big Twin lays every day or every other day.

I'm happy to give her a home forever, but worry that I should somehow treat her beak if that is causing her to not flourish. She gets organic feed, greens, organic scratch and meal worms as a treat.

I look forward to some advice from you pro's! Thanks.

 

[Uniontown Poultry]

Don't know how much of a 'pro' I am, but here are some thoughts... It almost looks like she'd had a beak trimming as a chick - this is fairly common in production layers, but it is not unheard of for farmers to beak trim their birds, too. The reason is so that the birds won't peck at each other and cause damage. There are production birds out there with much shorter top beaks than Wee One's, and they do fine in the backyard after they are taken out of production - if it doesn't recede too far, Wee One should be just fine.
If she wasn't trimmed for being a bitchy little thing as a peep, then it may have been an injury. There are a few forum entries here with folks who've had birds with broken or cracked beaks, which can cause the busted part to fall off and not grow back, resulting in a receded beak. Again, as long as it does not recede so far that she cannot eat, she should be fine.

If you want to see if she is laying yet, you can pick her up & check her bottom. First, look and see if her vent is tight, the edges looking like the lips of someone making a 'fish-face,' or relaxed, the relaxed vent having passed an egg (it will not tighten up again after passing the egg until she stops laying again, like during a molt or in winter). Second, you can check her pubic bones on either side just above the vent - if they are inflexible and nearly joined at the end above the vent, she is probably not laying, and if they are a little flexible and you can fit at least 2 finger-widths between them, she is laying. Hope this helps!

 

[chix in va]

Thanks Uniontown,

There are indeed chickens with much shorter upper beaks than Wee One's, so I feel better that she may be OK. The fact that it's getting shorter is alarming, but perhaps it's sloughing off the damaged part?

She and Big Twin came from a family operation, that seemed to be a 4H project for the kids. I hope no one tried de-beaking as an experiment :< A friend got another 2 from the same family and hers are all OK.

If anyone has suggestions of what I can give her to supplement to hasten her healing, I'd love to know. I do let them free-range a couple of times a week for a few hours, and they have a 10' x 25' run with earth floor to share between the 4 birds (the other 2 are an Orpington and a suspected Easter-Egger (she's just hatched out a Sizzle, a Leghorn and an Americauna!) so I don't think they're overcrowded. The walls of the run are 1" square hardware cloth, so she might have gotten caught in that?

I'll try checking her vent status if I can catch her up! Good tip for an exam. My heart goes out to her, since she's the under-chicken of the group!