I found five rust-red feathers in the coop this morning, after our two Rhode Island Red hens, Nellie and Hope, sauntered out into the pen for breakfast.
Chickens lose the occasional feather throughout the year, so today's discovery is no big deal, in and of itself. But with autumn right around the corner, this was no isolated incident. One of the hens has begun her annual molt, which involves discarding old feathers to make room for a new set of duds.
Eyeballing the hens this morning, both of them still appeared to be fully feathered, but that means nothing. The loss of a few feathers would not be immediately apparent on a chicken. More telling was the fact that Nellie now has one feather on her back that’s askew. It points upward instead of resting flat, which probably means it will fall out soon.
So Nellie is molting. With any luck, Hope won’t be far behind, although the timing of such things can be unpredictable. The main question now is whether Nellie will have a soft molt, which would drag on slowly over a period of months, or a hard molt, in which all of the feathers would fall out almost simultaneously and be replaced in short order.
Nellie recently stopped laying, which may have happened because the days are growing shorter or because she felt a molt coming on. None of the hens we’ve owned over the last six years has laid any eggs while molting. Overall, though, the hens seem to take molting in stride, with little change in their behavior.
Just don’t touch them while the process is underway. As old feathers drop like leaves in an October breeze and countless new “pin feathers” poke through the skin, physical contact with anyone is the farthest thing from a chicken’s mind. Hands off is the guiding principle, for reasons that, at least to the molting chicken, seem perfectly obvious.
Chickens lose the occasional feather throughout the year, so today's discovery is no big deal, in and of itself. But with autumn right around the corner, this was no isolated incident. One of the hens has begun her annual molt, which involves discarding old feathers to make room for a new set of duds.
Eyeballing the hens this morning, both of them still appeared to be fully feathered, but that means nothing. The loss of a few feathers would not be immediately apparent on a chicken. More telling was the fact that Nellie now has one feather on her back that’s askew. It points upward instead of resting flat, which probably means it will fall out soon.
So Nellie is molting. With any luck, Hope won’t be far behind, although the timing of such things can be unpredictable. The main question now is whether Nellie will have a soft molt, which would drag on slowly over a period of months, or a hard molt, in which all of the feathers would fall out almost simultaneously and be replaced in short order.
Nellie recently stopped laying, which may have happened because the days are growing shorter or because she felt a molt coming on. None of the hens we’ve owned over the last six years has laid any eggs while molting. Overall, though, the hens seem to take molting in stride, with little change in their behavior.
Just don’t touch them while the process is underway. As old feathers drop like leaves in an October breeze and countless new “pin feathers” poke through the skin, physical contact with anyone is the farthest thing from a chicken’s mind. Hands off is the guiding principle, for reasons that, at least to the molting chicken, seem perfectly obvious.
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