While yellow is a skin color that some chickens naturally have, if your bird’s skin starts to suddenly change from white to yellow you’d understandably be concerned.
This article explores why this may be happening in your bird.
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Why is my chicken’s skin yellow?
How your bird looks can tell you a lot about the health of the animal, this includes chickens.
If you’re used to your bird looking one way and the bird’s appearance starts to change, then you’d be right to be concerned, here is why this may be happening to your bird.
Diet change:
One of the simplest reasons why your bird may have yellow skin, or may develop yellow skin, may be because of the bird’s diet.
Grass-fed chickens, and free-range chickens, usually have skin that is a deeper yellow color. The skin of grain-fed chickens is usually paler, and more white.
If your bird’s skin changes from white to yellow in your care then this may happen because the bird is now grass-fed, or free-range.
If your newly bought chicken arrives with yellow skin then this can mean that the bird was grass-fed at the breeders.
What to do:
This yellow skin does not mean that the bird is unhealthy, it simply means that its diet is different from the diet of white-skinned chickens.
If you want to test this theory out and see if the diet is the cause of your bird’s yellow skin then change the bird’s diet to a grain feed to see if their skin changes to white
Egg laying:
Egg laying can change how a chicken looks and acts. When a bird is laying eggs some of the pigment from the skin and other body parts is removed and is used to color the egg yolks.
The color returns to the bird’s skin once the bird stops laying eggs. Your bird may simply not be laying eggs and its skin may look more yellow than it did when it was egg laying.
What to do:
If you know that your bird has previously been laying eggs and has now stopped then you can assume that the bird’s skin is turning yellow because it has stopped laying eggs.
The bird’s skin color is simply going back to what it was before it started laying eggs
Jaundice:
Another reason why your chicken may have developed yellow skin is that the bird has jaundice, jaundice is not an illness in itself, it is the symptom of a variety of different illnesses.
A bird with jaundice may have a blood disease or a liver problem. This can be caused by a number of things including a metabolic disturbance, toxins in your bird’s feed, or exposure to toxins in your bird’s environment through plants or insects.
What to do:
The recommended course of action in this scenario is to take the bird to the vet for an examination, your vet will run some tests on your bird, do some lab work, and do a fecal analysis.
If you cannot immediately get your bird to the vet you’d need to isolate the bird to keep it from possibly infecting other birds.
Do this by keeping the bird in a pet carrier and adding soft flooring to the bottom of the pet carrier. Also, provide food and water to the bird while it is in isolation.
Avoid trying to treat your bird yourself in this case, your vet will know what to do.
Trying to figure out which illness your bird has is not advised as the chances of an incorrect diagnosis are high and thus the chances of treating the bird using incorrect medications are also high.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Why Is My Chickens Skin Green?, Why Is My Chickens Face White, Chicken Has Lump Under Eye, Chicken Swollen Under Beak, Why Is My Chicken’s Skin Red?, Red Skin On Chicken Head, Why Is My Chickens Face Red?, Why Does My Chickens Face Change Color?, Chicken Pale Around Eyes