Young birds' Feathers falling out

I have noticed a few feathers on the floor of our young bird loft recently.

Can anyone give me some advice why these feathers are falling out of one (or more) of our young birds?

If you look closely at the images below, you will see that it looks like the quill ends of the feathers have just melted or rotted away.



I have never seen anything like this before and I am a bit troubled by it.  Here is another image



I will try and find out which bird or birds it is coming from, but I am not sure where on the bird's body these feathers are coming from, or what is causing it.

Any help would be great.

Phil

Feather mites. Ivomectin on perches should kill them or insecticide powder.
https://www.beautyofbirds.com/featherlice.html

Good suggestion Hal, but the loft was thoroughly cleaned out.

Then sprayed with Virkon S.

All the perches/box perches were dusted with Diatomaceous Earth

Plus every bird was dopped with Easitox against insects and mites when they went into the section, which was only two weeks ago.

Thanks anyway.

Phil

put up a good picture of the section they are housed in maybe they are rubbing or catching their flights on something I would have agreed with hals suggestion but going on your precautionary measures it would sound unlikely unless the mites were in the nest ...also diet can lead to this but flites break higher up in this case, I would still spray the section and breeding sections with duramitex or similar and blow torch regularly I have never encountered this before or have any experience with it sorry I cant help further as far as I am aware virkons is not for mites more for diseases if I remember rightly you had dowelled sections so put a pic up of the section phil the problem may lay there

OK - here are a couple of image of the section where the first round babies are.



As you can see, it is a standard young bird section.  We used it last year without any of these problems



If you look closely, there is yet another feather on the bottom row of the box perches.

I know Virkon S is not for mites etc - but Easitox is supposed to be for flies and mites.  I am just wondering if one of the birds is having a bad reaction to the Easitox.

I can buy some Duramitex but it might take 2 weeks to arrive.

Thanks for the help so far - I have not come up against this before, so it is a mystery to me as well.

Phil

what about the front of the section phil is it dowelled cant see the front

oldstrain wrote:

what about the front of the section phil is it dowelled cant see the front

Yes Darren - the from is a standard sliding dowelled door - but as far as I know no bird has jumped up at the bars.

Do you want to photo of the doors?

Phil

Looks like they have been chewed off?

mesh over the dowel m8

If they are secondaries there will be gaps in their wings, or maybe they're covers. Don't look like primary flights I think its one or more pigeons reacting to the stuff you used for lice. Are the reds ok, any feathers off these? Are these a bit older?

They look like secondary flights.

It also looks like a couple of mils of quill may be left in the wing. If this is the case I can only guess at some kind of parasite attack.

Check the wings carefully to see if there are any quill remnants, if nothing found of feather stubs it could possibly be a nutrition deficiency of some kind which has not allowed the feathers to grow properly.

I have never seen anything like this just passing on my thoughts to help find the cause, hope it does not develope into anything more serious.

Another thought as I read my post is that if it is only one pigeon or a nest pair it could be genetic.

caramel wrote:

They look like secondary flights.

It also looks like a couple of mils of quill may be left in the wing. If this is the case I can only guess at some kind of parasite attack.

Check the wings carefully to see if there are any quill remnants, if nothing found of feather stubs it could possibly be a nutrition deficiency of some kind which has not allowed the feathers to grow properly.

I have never seen anything like this just passing on my thoughts to help find the cause, hope it does not develope into anything more serious.

Another thought as I read my post is that if it is only one pigeon or a nest pair it could be genetic.

Same, same first thought for me a nutrition issue etc. Certaintly pay to try & just find out which birds are dropping them. May just be time, for the old vegetable dye trick to come into play by Phil.
*****

Knackered wrote:

caramel wrote:

They look like secondary flights.

It also looks like a couple of mils of quill may be left in the wing. If this is the case I can only guess at some kind of parasite attack.

Check the wings carefully to see if there are any quill remnants, if nothing found of feather stubs it could possibly be a nutrition deficiency of some kind which has not allowed the feathers to grow properly.

I have never seen anything like this just passing on my thoughts to help find the cause, hope it does not develope into anything more serious.

Another thought as I read my post is that if it is only one pigeon or a nest pair it could be genetic.

Same, same first thought for me a nutrition issue etc. Certaintly pay to try & just find out which birds are dropping them. May just be time, for the old vegetable dye trick to come into play by Phil.
*****

What is the vegetable dye trick please?
Phil

blueskylofts wrote:

Knackered wrote:

caramel wrote:

They look like secondary flights.

It also looks like a couple of mils of quill may be left in the wing. If this is the case I can only guess at some kind of parasite attack.

Check the wings carefully to see if there are any quill remnants, if nothing found of feather stubs it could possibly be a nutrition deficiency of some kind which has not allowed the feathers to grow properly.

I have never seen anything like this just passing on my thoughts to help find the cause, hope it does not develope into anything more serious.

Another thought as I read my post is that if it is only one pigeon or a nest pair it could be genetic.

Same, same first thought for me a nutrition issue etc. Certaintly pay to try & just find out which birds are dropping them. May just be time, for the old vegetable dye trick to come into play by Phil.
*****

What is the vegetable dye trick please?
Phil

Ever seen birds that have the eyes painted on there wings Phil etc for the hawk issue. Same type of thing, but you paint each baby wings under question a differant colour to find out which ones are dropping the feathers in question.

Sorry guys - we had a minor hurricane on Monday around 06:30 hours.

We had winds of over 100 miles an hour.  It took all the electricity out for an area of over 50 miles across.

We have lost lots of roof tiles and it ripped our 45 foot long poly tunnel to shreds.

Our lecky came back on about 10 minutes ago.  Thank goodness we have a generator or all our freezer stuff would be ruined.

I have now found out that there are only TWO birds that are being affected by the feathers falling out.  Strangely enough, both birds are from the same parents but a generation apart.

But the first round eggs were floated under other birds, not their parents, even in a different building, so it can't be bugs in any particular building or loft.

I have not been able to order anything, not even Duramitex, so we are still where we were on Sunday afternoon.

Trustfully, now our internet is back and we have a phone, I can order some stuff.

Have any of you had any further thoughts?

Phil

I have read it can also be a fungal issue never encountered it b4 sorry to hear about the storm

Spray them under the wings with fly spray. Cannot do any harm.

halcanada wrote:

Spray them under the wings with fly spray. Cannot do any harm.

That is a great idea Hal.  Because of the lack of anything else, I think I will try it.

What I forgot to say last time was:-

I have looked at the wings of the two young birds that are affected and I can clearly see little stubby ends of the Secondary Flights which look like they have withered off or been eaten off about 2 -3 mm from the skin.  The stubs of the secondary flights are still sticking out of the skin on the wing.

Does anyone know of any person or place, I could go to for help on this subject?

It sounds as if no-one on this forum has had any experience of troubles like this.  If I can find out what the cause of this is - I will put it up on this forum, so we might all learn for the future.

Phil

blueskylofts wrote:

Sorry guys - we had a minor hurricane on Monday around 06:30 hours.

We had winds of over 100 miles an hour.  It took all the electricity out for an area of over 50 miles across.

We have lost lots of roof tiles and it ripped our 45 foot long poly tunnel to shreds.

Our lecky came back on about 10 minutes ago.  Thank goodness we have a generator or all our freezer stuff would be ruined.

I have now found out that there are only TWO birds that are being affected by the feathers falling out.  Strangely enough, both birds are from the same parents but a generation apart.



But the first round eggs were floated under other birds, not their parents, even in a different building, so it can't be bugs in any particular building or loft.

I have not been able to order anything, not even Duramitex, so we are still where we were on Sunday afternoon.

Trustfully, now our internet is back and we have a phone, I can order some stuff.

Have any of you had any further thoughts?

Phil

Sorry to hear of this blueskylofts hopefully you get everything back in place.

Topic was feather rot on here few years back. Just Googled it.
https://pigeons.forumotion.com/t959-feather-rot-help

halcanada wrote:

Topic was feather rot on here few years back. Just Googled it.
https://pigeons.forumotion.com/t959-feather-rot-help

Interesting Hal . Back in the good old days, here when we had none of the fancy type stuff etc like today we used straight kerosene to spray our lofts to kill bugs of all descriptions as such. Today, I'm much more up with it as such       & use vinegar, bleach & eucalyptus oil combined.

Bad news their Phil hope you get it sorted any other young lost any feathers

I don't know what happened to my last email but we now think we have found out what is causing our problem. It's quill mite. I googled quill mite and it came up with some photographs of feathers that just look like the feathers we have found on the young bird loft floor. As far as we know, it has only affected two birds, strangely enough both from the same family but a generation apart. I have looked at the wings of the birds where the secondary feathers are missing and you can clearly see two or three mm of quill stubs still sticking out of the skin.

Apparently, if I remove these stubs, new feathers will grow back. Whether they will grow back in time for the racing season, I don't know. We'll have to see.

We bought some stuff today which we hope will clear the quill mites. It is something that you spray on the perches, loft etc. not on the birds. But I am also going to see if they will go in a bath Saturday afternoon if the weather is good. I am also going to give the young bird section a good clean out and get the gas torch on everything before we spray this jollopy everywhere.

As far as we know, no other birds have been affected but they do seem a bit twitchy and itchy and some we have seen stamping which to me is always a sign of some kind of nasty creepy crawly bitey thing. I read on the internet that Moxydectin is good for external parasites as well as worms, so we put all the young birds on that for a day this week.

We will keep you all informed. It would be nice to get to the bottom of this and maybe we can all learn something as it seems to be a pretty rare occurrence.

Cheers, have a great weekend everybody.

Phil

moxidectin will kill any bloodsucker ,worms and air sac mite but I would do them asap then again 3 weeks later ...at least you know what yer dealing with now atb

oldstrain wrote:

moxidectin will kill any bloodsucker ,worms and air sac mite but I would do them asap then again 3 weeks later ...at least you know what yer dealing with now atb

I gave them Moxidectin on Wednesday for 24 hours as instructed on the bottle.

I will put it down i the diary to do them again in 3 weeks time.

Thanks Daren.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Is anyone training their old birds this weekend? We hope to if the weather is good.

Phil