Before Liz and I began keeping chickens, I never would have thought that they are feathered bundles of personal quirks. But so it is.
I mentioned in this space a while back that our Plymouth Rock, Snow, was molting. She still is, and although new feathers are coming in here, old feathers continue to drop off there, making her look, for the moment, like something Dr. Frankenstein created when he needed a break from working on you know what.
Now Snow has been joined by Hope, one of our Rhode Island Reds. But unlike Snow, whose molt is painfully obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes, Hope’s molt has been much more subdued so far. In fact, the only sign that she’s molting is that she has lost almost all of her tail feathers. The rest of her looks just fine.
Yet despite the fact that Snow is having a much harder time of it than Hope, Snow has maintained her voracious and insatiable appetite throughout her ordeal. Hope, a more sensitive and less flexible soul who's stuck at the bottom of the pecking order, began to show less interest in food as soon as that first tail feather broke free.
In fact, Hope’s appetite fell off so dramatically at the outset that, for one day, she even turned up her beak when offered mealworm, which, to a chicken, is like manna from heaven. Imagine a small child running away from an approaching ice-cream truck on a hot August afternoon and you’ll have some understanding of Hope’s behavior.
Hope’s appetite has improved since then, perhaps because she has adjusted to what is happening to her. Still, her behavior in this situation provides a clear reminder that all of us have individual personalities, whether we are people, or dogs, or cats or — yes — even chickens.
I mentioned in this space a while back that our Plymouth Rock, Snow, was molting. She still is, and although new feathers are coming in here, old feathers continue to drop off there, making her look, for the moment, like something Dr. Frankenstein created when he needed a break from working on you know what.
Now Snow has been joined by Hope, one of our Rhode Island Reds. But unlike Snow, whose molt is painfully obvious to anyone with a pair of eyes, Hope’s molt has been much more subdued so far. In fact, the only sign that she’s molting is that she has lost almost all of her tail feathers. The rest of her looks just fine.
Yet despite the fact that Snow is having a much harder time of it than Hope, Snow has maintained her voracious and insatiable appetite throughout her ordeal. Hope, a more sensitive and less flexible soul who's stuck at the bottom of the pecking order, began to show less interest in food as soon as that first tail feather broke free.
In fact, Hope’s appetite fell off so dramatically at the outset that, for one day, she even turned up her beak when offered mealworm, which, to a chicken, is like manna from heaven. Imagine a small child running away from an approaching ice-cream truck on a hot August afternoon and you’ll have some understanding of Hope’s behavior.
Hope’s appetite has improved since then, perhaps because she has adjusted to what is happening to her. Still, her behavior in this situation provides a clear reminder that all of us have individual personalities, whether we are people, or dogs, or cats or — yes — even chickens.
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