Hens losing feathers around neck! Please help!

[angelcheex]

I have a small flock of 5 hens - SLW, Leghorn, Blue Cochin, RSL, Salmon Faverolle - and the last three are losing feathers on their necks. I did keep them confined to their coop all of last week and we had a drop in temperature (as did everyone else) recently to about 50's from typical 80+. Other than that, they've been laying well, eating, acting normal. I haven't seen any of them fighting and am not sure if they have lice or not.

Here are some pix I just took. Any ideas are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[BantamFan4Life]

They're probably molting or picking on each other. Fastidiously check your birds for mites, ticks, etc, sometimes chickens could lose feathers in those infestations. Otherwise, they should grow back eventually.

 

[realsis]

I would inspect them for lice or mites.usually with lice you will see clusters of white eggs at the base of the feather shift and the lice are straw colored.mites egg sacks will go up the feathers and are usually like a mildew color.the mites tend to look like small pepper flakes. You can take a flea comb and comb the feathers and if you see any little crawlies it's usually mites or lice. They tend to infest in winter. I'm having a bout with lice myself now as I bought a new bird and she had them.i didn't know she had them for about a month.then I noticed the eggs. You can treat with poultry dust and retreat about 11 days later. I would think that's what's going on causing the feather loss. If not bugs you might have a feather picking bird. Sometimes out of boredom they can start to do that. But I would start by looking for lice or mites be cause winter is the prime time for infestion . Hope This helps.