If I’ve learned anything since we began keeping hens more than five years ago, it’s that there are few hard and fast rules that apply to all chickens in all situations.
Take the molt, when chickens replace old feathers with new ones. Mature birds molt once a year, according to the experts, normally in late summer or autumn. That being said, we once had a chicken skip a year. Another current member of our tiny flock — Hope, a Rhode Island Red — once began molting in February, which isn’t the best time of year to lose your feathers. But she did, and lived to cluck the tale. Usually, the hens molt at different times, but last year, they all molted in unison.
There also are different types of molts. In the case of a so-called hard molt, a chicken loses all of its feathers pretty much simultaneously, so the hen looks like hell for a while but the whole thing is over fairly quickly. In a soft molt, the process is gradual, so it takes a long time but the bird doesn’t look like, well, a plucked chicken.
Only one of our three hens — Snow, a Plymouth Rock — is molting right now. She’s obviously having a soft molt, because the process started about two months ago and continued, unabated, for weeks, with white feathers flying all over the place but no visible patches of bare skin. Then the molt stopped as suddenly as it began.
A couple of weeks passed without the sight of additional feathers littering coop and pen. So I figured Snow was done molting for the year. I was wrong, thanks to a brand new phenomenon (for us anyway) that I have dubbed moltus interruptus.
A few days ago, following that two-week hiatus, Snow started tossing feathers left and right all over again. Near as I can tell, most of her body is now newly refeathered as a result of the first round of molting. But her tail is getting smaller and scruffier by the day in this second round.
So why was there an unprecedented break in Snow's molt? I have no idea.
Scientists have determined that the chicken is the closest living relative of the T. rex. (Skeptical? Look it up.) I wonder if that fearsome creature had more predictable habits than its diminutive modern-day cousin.
Take the molt, when chickens replace old feathers with new ones. Mature birds molt once a year, according to the experts, normally in late summer or autumn. That being said, we once had a chicken skip a year. Another current member of our tiny flock — Hope, a Rhode Island Red — once began molting in February, which isn’t the best time of year to lose your feathers. But she did, and lived to cluck the tale. Usually, the hens molt at different times, but last year, they all molted in unison.
There also are different types of molts. In the case of a so-called hard molt, a chicken loses all of its feathers pretty much simultaneously, so the hen looks like hell for a while but the whole thing is over fairly quickly. In a soft molt, the process is gradual, so it takes a long time but the bird doesn’t look like, well, a plucked chicken.
Only one of our three hens — Snow, a Plymouth Rock — is molting right now. She’s obviously having a soft molt, because the process started about two months ago and continued, unabated, for weeks, with white feathers flying all over the place but no visible patches of bare skin. Then the molt stopped as suddenly as it began.
A couple of weeks passed without the sight of additional feathers littering coop and pen. So I figured Snow was done molting for the year. I was wrong, thanks to a brand new phenomenon (for us anyway) that I have dubbed moltus interruptus.
A few days ago, following that two-week hiatus, Snow started tossing feathers left and right all over again. Near as I can tell, most of her body is now newly refeathered as a result of the first round of molting. But her tail is getting smaller and scruffier by the day in this second round.
So why was there an unprecedented break in Snow's molt? I have no idea.
Scientists have determined that the chicken is the closest living relative of the T. rex. (Skeptical? Look it up.) I wonder if that fearsome creature had more predictable habits than its diminutive modern-day cousin.
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