Hen Chronicles: When hens turn into cartoon characters

Ah, the joys of watching a chicken molt.

Nellie, one of our Rhode Island Reds, now has a spotty covering of feathers as she goes through the process of casting off the old and bringing in the new. She’s fully "clothed" in some areas but shabby and balding in others, like someone emerging from a crazed barber's shop sporting the world’s worst haircut.

At dawn yesterday, Nellie pushed past the other hens when I opened the coop door, ran down to the pen and vigorously flapped her wings in what always strikes me as the chicken equivalent of a human's early-morning stretch. This caused a past-its-prime feather to fly off her body as if it had been shot into the air. The long, rust-colored feather floated lazily to the ground.

For that brief moment, Nellie looked quite cartoonish, like a frightened hen in a comic strip, scattering feathers in its wake as it scurries to evade some imaginary predator.