Shedding Chickens

Every year when the days get shorter, most chickens go through a molting season. Some chickens seem to molt, and have a harder time of it than others. The breeds we have now . . good grief . . it looks like a chicken massacre around here.

Every morning I go out and am sure something got them all and spread their feathers everywhere. I count heads and they’re all there but they’re looking a bit naked.

All of the feathers in today’s pictures are courtesy of 6 hens. They say roosters molt too but I never see my roosters looking naked like the hens do. The hens mostly stop laying when they’re molting.

Every time someone comes over here, I find myself explaining about the molting process because of all the feathers flying around everywhere.

I don’t know if I ever mentioned it but six or eight months ago, one of the hens was determined to hatch babies so I let her. She hatched three and all three of them are roosters. When they were little, they’d find places to escape under the fence and they decided they didn’t want to live in a fence. We said fine . . we don’t need three extra roosters anyway. Wouldn’t you know it . . all three of them have survived. They refuse to go into the coop at night so I have no idea how they survive. And, they are noisy! Every time I walk outside, I think “We’re so lucky to be living out here where no one complains about this noise!”

I’m not sure they’ve realized about the hens . . all inside the fence. Generally, roosters fight and if you have more than a couple, they’re always fighting. I googled it and found that without hens for them to be competing over, they often live together in peace. I kept expecting to see them fighting and I haven’t seen any of it so I guess they figure living outside the fence and having the run of the place is more fun than having the girls around.

They’re the blue laced Wyandotte roosters and they’re gorgeous but . . they’re roosters and they’re noisy.