What did we do before the days of googling? Even my 5-year old is familiar with the phrase, “let’s google that” and repeats this often when Mom and Dad don’t have an appropriate answer to her question. A word of warning folks- do NOT let your 5-year old google on her own. Lots of dangerous stuff out there!
As our hens arrived at and passed their first birthday we attentively watched their egg production wondering if those girls might loose some momentum. When Jane, my daughter’s new favorite hen, didn’t lay for several days I started to get nervous. For those of you who don’t know me, I get nervous at just about any out of the ordinary behavior.
Then came the feather loss. It started with a few scattered around the run, then followed with large patches of feathers everywhere! Not to mention the usual dominant protective behavior that Jane once exhibited had since retreated for a very stittish, run for your life sort of survival technique. Jane just sits around in dark corners most of the day, head tucked into her neck, tail down.
Views inside the coop and just outside the coop, that is a LOT of feathers!!
Views inside the coop and just outside the coop, that is a LOT of feathers!!
You can imagine the worry that set in. What is going on with Jane? I googled just about everything. Was she egg bound? Mites? Something stuck in her crop? I meticulously cleaned the coop- no sign of buggies. I checked her bottom to feel for eggs- no such luck there. I fed her water with oil in it- she didn’t appear to have any problems producing poo.
Thank goodness for the art of blogging. On a desperate search for some help I came across this blog post: http://mayalassiter.com/2009/09/this-chicken-is-molting/
YES! This is our Jane! Well, minus the laying eggs part… Upon further research I discovered that actually it is totally normal for all chickens to go through a molt in the fall when the days get shorter. They usually do not lay during this period and the amount of feathers they will loose varies from a few here and there to almost a fully naked body.
Jane, missing almost all her neck feathers...Eek!
Here is Alice at the beginning of her molt- mostly feathered, but definitely missing some tail feathers.
I was so relieved to figure out that this is normal behavior. When my favorite hen, Alice, stopped laying eggs and dropping feathers here and there a few days later I was comforted in knowing that this was just a molt.
Jane's neck feathers starting to return, this is a couple of weeks after she lost her neck feathers.
I can now see on both Jane and Alice the signs of new feathers coming in on that bald skin. What an interesting thing to watch!
Here is Alice, she lost all her tail feathers, but the new feathers are now emerging. Poor Alice looks a little like a teenage chicken again!
I hope that our own googling will someday help comfort your anxiety about a near naked chicken, happy hen keeping!
