Have you ever opened the coop one morning and there were feathers everywhere? The feathers are all sizes from tiny to tail feathers and they are scattered over the bedding. It looks like an animal got in there and mauled one of the hens, pretty scary. But when all the hens are accounted for and nobody has an injury, you know that molting season has started.
The hens don’t all molt at the same time or the same rate, even though they have the same hatch day and all my girls are Easter Eggers. Right now, only Fizzy looks like she is going through a hard molt, losing patches of feathers on her neck, her body and wings, and all her tail feathers. She shakes her head and the feathers fly out.
I worry about her because the girls are only a year old and this is the first time this has happened, and I don’t want her to get picked on. She is my gentlest of hens. So, I’ve been keeping an eye out, checking on her often and making sure she gets her share of the food. So far, I haven’t seen anyone bother her that she couldn’t shoo away.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, it has been raining and storming and much darker outside than it was just two weeks ago. Hens need a certain amount of light per day in order to lay an egg, so production is slowed and may stop soon. I’ve noticed that some of the folks nearby that sell eggs have their “Sorry no eggs” signs up already. It will probably be months before Fizz lays again. I have no conflicting feelings about this, because I want Fizzy to have a long happy life and she needs a break.
I’ve been giving all the girls extra protein treats, dried mealworms and scrambled eggs as a supplement to help grow back healthy feathers. I still have layer feed in the feeders because I got three eggs today. The extra calcium in layer feed is essential for the layers. Once all my girls stop laying for the season I will switch them to raiser feed and stop giving them egg shells so they will get the right nutrition for Winter, while cutting back on the treats.
Fizzy’s feathers are already coming back, and she seems happy, but she doesn’t want to be touched. I think that the new feathers are probably sensitive, so I just talk to her and feed her and make sure she is warm and dry. She’s actually pretty cute, to me, with the spots of gray that remind me of when she was tiny. She’s adorable without her tailfeathers, like a fluffy stuffed toy that I can’t pick up.
charmachicken.com 