Hen Chronicles: My first molt (well, not mine, exactly)

Nala, our beautiful Barred Rock hen, began littering the coop and pen with fanny feathers a few weeks ago, until her backside was completely bare.

The dreaded molt had begun. 
We’ve only had our girls since April and chickens generally molt in the late summer or early fall. So although I had read about this annual ritual, seeing a molt in the flesh - quite literally, when you’re staring at a chicken with a bald butt - is something else entirely.

The Chicken Encyclopedia, by Gail Damerow, defines a molt as “the periodic shedding and renewal of feathers.” Damerow writes, as do other experts, that the molt occurs “in a specific sequence, starting at the head and neck and gradually working toward the tail.”

One thing I’ve learned during my six months of chicken parenthood is that hens sometimes ignore the claims of experts, probably because chickens can’t read so they don’t know what is expected of them. In Nala’s case, for example, it was the fanny feathers that dropped out first.

Initially, being a fretter, I worried that Nala’s reversal of the normal molting sequence meant this was no ordinary molt, and that something was amiss. It didn’t help matters any that Nala’s personality changed during all this. (Yes, chickens do have individual personalities.) She seemed distracted and a bit dazed, staring up at me with a confused look in her eye whenever I checked on her.

Thus began the fanny watch.

Every day I scrutinized Nala’s butt (from a distance, I might add) hoping to spot the telltale signs of emerging feathers, but there were none.

Then, finally, after a week or so, neat rows of bluish-black “quills” appeared on her bum. Except that they weren’t really quills at all, but rolled up feathers that were not long enough yet to open up. The aforementioned experts write that emerging feathers look like porcupine quills until they expand, so I finally knew Nala was on the right track.

For whatever reason, Snow and Stella, the other hens, have shown no signs of molting so far. Maybe they’re on a delayed schedule, or maybe they’re somewhat younger than Nala, and so are not old enough to start molting yet.

The latter would be fine by me. I’ve read that a chicken has something like 8,500 feathers, so Nala may have a ways to go yet before she’s fully decked out in her new duds. At least she won’t be running around with a bare bottom that made her look (heaven forbid) like she was ready for the oven.