Hen Chronicles: At long last, the molt has begun

One of our three hens -- the attention-loving Plymouth Rock, Snow, who often seems to be the focus of these posts -- is molting.

Now, I know a thing or two about molting. It's the periodic discarding of old feathers to make way for new ones. Having kept chickens for more than two years, I've seen plenty of it. I realize it's normal, it's healthy and it happens every year or so, usually when the days grow shorter. A hen will stop laying while moulting, and she may shy away from the other chickens, to avoid being touched or bumped. But there's nothing remotely worrisome about the process.

If it's a "soft molt," the chicken may not even develop bald stops, or at least not very many of them. If it's a "hard molt," you're going to have a seemingly plucked, pathetic-looking chicken on your hands for weeks. Either way, it's what chickens do. The fresh feathers are cleaner and more lustrous than the old ones, and the "new" chicken ends up looking prettier and spiffier than before.

And yet, when I went out to the coop the other day and found dozens of white feathers scattered all over the pen, I held my breath for a fraction of a second. Maybe the subconscious mind asks itself, at the sight of so much chicken "clothing" blanketing the ground, what has gone wrong. Even though the conscious mind knows perfectly well that the answer is this: nothing at all.