Nellie, the only one of our three hens who’s still molting, looks like a child’s craft project gone awry. Missing feathers. Loose, soon-to-be-discarded feathers. Emerging replacement feathers that haven't unfurled yet. It’s as if an easily distracted kid decided to make a papier-mâché chicken, ran out of parts, got bored and finally gave up.
But molt or no molt, the coop’s hierarchy remains intact. Snow, our Plymouth Rock, rules the roost, followed by No. 2 Nellie, a Rhode Island Red. Nellie’s fellow Red, Hope, brings up the rear. Thus it has been for well over a year, and thus it remains.
So I suppose it should come as no surprise that even though Nellie is the only pathetic-looking member of our flock at the moment, seemingly vulnerable and obviously not at her best, she still brings her A game to the hunt for snacks. As "the girls" race to gobble down mealworms, Nellie defers to Snow, but nudges Hope aside with a brief flurry of squawking, simulated attacking and gentle pecking. This forces the put-upon but clever Hope to devise circuitous routes to the goodies, thereby assuring that she gets her share.
The pecking order: even a half-bald, cartoonish excuse for a hen won’t relinquish her place in it.
The pecking order: even a half-bald, cartoonish excuse for a hen won’t relinquish her place in it.
