I recently said that Marmite was the last girl to moult. Ebony had had a partial moult late summer after her one broody spell.
Suddenly instead of heaps of little black feathers in the run and chicken shed I am finding huge heaps of big black feathers. Ebony looked a bit tatty but not as bad I would expect considering the huge amount of feathers I have been picking up over the last few days.
Then yesterday I saw that she too had lost her tail. I had to gently move Speckles aside to get some photos.
What I find interesting is that two different breeds and different sized girls but with the same colour feathers are both moulting at the same time and have both lost their tails at the same time. I expect it is just coincidence.
For a bigger sized girl Ebony looks even more odd with no tail. Tail feathers grow back quickly though so I am sure she will be back to normal soon. And here is one girl with no loss of confidence during moulting. Ebony isn’t afraid of anything and it was easy to get a close up of her.
Click here to see the history of my flock.
My hens, most of them anyway, went through a molt and the barred rocks still look horrible. Nobody is laying. It’s unreal. I’ve never, in many many years of keeping hens, had a time when none of my hens were laying. Have you noticed a decrease in production as well? -Jenn
I have two out of nine still laying, that’s Flame and Smoke. Speckles is eight and no longer lays but when she did she always stopped at the end of summer. The other two bigger girls stop over winter and I am surprised that Flame is still laying. Seramas are supposed to moult a bit at a time and continue laying over winter but mine stop laying apart from Smoke. Smoke lays right through December. It may be because she is a serial broody all through the summer. She is the best layer when she is laying but only lays for three weeks then goes broody.
She do look strange, but she will soon be back to her normal lovely self.
She does look very odd but her tail will soon grow back.
The old feathers do start to look very tired and the new ones really pristine – mu buff rock looks splendid now, but won;t lay again till the spring. Sprinkles has not laid for 5 days, so I am assuming she is starting the moult. Yesterday morning, there as a soft-shelled egg when I let them out. I managed to get it bfore Speckles managed to feast on it, but I have no idea who laid it, although it was under where the silver sussex roost.. This morning, however, ther was a beautiful dark brown egg, still warm when I let them out, but I have no idea whose, as none of them looks rady to lay again, but maybe this will avoid being in Jenn’s situation. Better news, perhaps, is that all 3 broodies have rejoined the normal flock in the past few days. They’ve all moulted, so will come back into lay – and then the cycle will start again, whatever the weather and hours of daylight!
It will be interesting to see if you can find out who laid the brown egg, perhaps when the next one is laid. I am expecting to only have Smoke laying by the end of the month but Shadow and Sugar may start laying around January. Those broodies! It is good when the moult is behind us.
2nd dark brown egg today – Milly, who moulted first, but never looks very red in the comb department. Hopefully, she’ll keep us going for a while!
Aw, That’s great. It’s always good to know who is laying and it will be good to have a few eggs through winter.