It is towards the end of each breeding round that one can encounter an irritating situation when over-nervous hens start to pluck the "down" and often the main feathers, from their chicks. A large number of people encounter the problem every year and many good birds are ruined for the show bench because of it.
There are two types of feather plucking, as it is termed, the first of which runs in families. There are a number of commercial products on the market to help alleviate the problem, but I have found that Astral or Nivea cream, which can be found in most bathrooms, are as good as anything to soothe the damage. By applying a liberal dose, the parents will object to the taste and often the habit can be broken immediately. What I regard as the second type of feather plucking, often occurs when the chicks reach four weeks of age and then refuse to leave the nest box. The hen wants them out of the way to recommence laying and she starts pulling them towards the nesting entrance. When this is observed, I put all the young on the cage floor, the oldest keeping the youngest warm as they huddle together. The cock will take care of them. Incidentally, I always leave plenty of seed husks on the cage floor when young birds are ready to leave the nest. They then have somewhere to sleep, rather than on a bare cage floor. You can easily put a spare concave in one corner if you wish and you will find the chicks enjoy sleeping on that.
Do not be in a hurry to remove youngsters from their parents even though they appear to be eating seed and can fend for themselves. This is provided, of course, the adults are not objecting. I firmly believe that if youngsters are fed by their parents for an extra week, it does them a world of good and greatly helps their development. If chicks are moved too soon, it can cause them to have a severe set back from which some never recover.
When I do finally move my youngsters, I put them into a large stock cage which is seven feet, six inches in length (2.2m). A show cage is fitted on the end so they can enter and leave at will. By doing this, it is easy to watch them in case any of them become slightly ill from the change of surroundings. They are, of course, being trained at the same time. The youngsters remain in this cage for two to three weeks before entering the flights. By then they have developed the necessary wing muscles and once in the flights they are mature enough to fly and perch sensibly, rather than bang themselves against the walls and each other. Do not allow them access to the outside flights until they have become accustomed to their new quarters and the location of their food and water. Sometimes if a youngster goes immediately into an open flight, it stays out for far too long, doesn't go in to feed and becomes very distressed and eventually sick. When you do allow them outside, choose a fine day. If it is wet and raining, they get soaked quickly and soon contract enteritis. This is often fatal if not caught in time. Always mix a few adults in with the young ones. They show them the way around and help considerably towards steadying such active "babies".
Let me discuss flights in general. A flight is for exercise, but what is exercise? Length of flight doesn't mean a thing, because once a bird is airborne it can glide a great distance. Visitors ask me why do I have long flights outside and my usual answer is that it takes up garden space very usefully! However, they do give the birds more ground space to run around and as my flights have earth floors, they enjoy picking around in the soil. I have many wild plants (weeds if you like) growing in the flights, such as dandelion, persicaria, chickweed and groundsel, plus of course grasses.
The main object in exercising one's birds is to develop the chest and neck muscles and this can only be achieved to its maximum by making the birds fly vertically. So if you cannot supply your birds with large flights, don't worry. Just make them as high as you can and place your perches near to the roof with the feeding dishes on the floor. Your birds, after they have been feeding, have to work much harder to fly upwards and thus the neck and chest muscles develop. These, when fully grown make a big difference to a show bird.
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