Hen Chronicles: Hope molts, but turns a corner

Several weeks ago, I mentioned in this space that Hope, one of our Rhode Island Reds, was molting. She still is. Many new feathers have grown in, but she remains a slimmer version of her normal self because the process is not complete.

Yet one thing is clear: Hope has turned a corner.

When last I mentioned that Hope was losing feathers, new “pin feathers” - so-called because they are rolled up tight and look like pins when they first emerge - were poking through the skin on her neck. Well, those feathers have matured, as has some new plumage elsewhere on her body. Hope looks a lot better these days. But what’s equally important is that she obviously feels better too.

Hope and Nellie
last May, as pullets

Gone are the days when a balding Hope was timid and nervous around the other three hens, none of whom is molting. Back then, Hope was reluctant to leave the coop with the rest of the flock in the morning. I had to nudge her off the roost and out into the pen every day, so I could clean the coop.

No more.

For the past few days, as more and more feathers have filled in, Hope has run out into the pen on her own initiative at dawn, tagging along after Snow, Nala and Nellie. She muscles in now to get her share of the grub. She is perkier, and appears happier, than she has for quite some time. The vulnerable, apprehensive quality that had her scurrying away from the other hens, or hiding by herself in the coop, is a thing of the past.

Saturday offered further evidence of this welcome transformation. As dusk began to settle that afternoon, I went out to the coop to lock “the girls” in for the night. They head into the coop by themselves as darkness approaches, so usually, all I have to do is close and latch the door, to keep them safe from predators until I release them at dawn.
 
Not this time. Sure enough, Snow, Nala and Nellie were roosting in the coop. But the newly revived Hope was still roaming around the slowly darkening pen, presumably in search of one last bedtime snack before she called it a night.

There wasn’t much point in trying to force her into the coop. I knew she would go in on her own eventually. So I headed back to the house for 15 minutes before making another foray. Yet Hope was still in the pen. And this time she was squawking loudly, probably to protest the dearth of treats. So loudly, in fact, that the racket prompted Nala to abandon her perch in the coop and run back out into the pen to investigate the ruckus.

I trudged back to the house yet again, to wait a bit longer. Hope, and Nala, finally went to bed a few minutes later.

Researchers say chickens, like humans, have rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which means they can dream. Perhaps Hope, in her sleep that night, conjured up a world in which she finally rose to the top of the pecking order in our little flock. All in keeping with her newfound self-confidence.