Too Many Chickens!

Garden Guys won’t be broadcasting again until the new year, but don’t worry, I have stuff to fill those Fridays. For now, here’s a podcast my friend Even does called Necessary & Sufficient, in which he mails you two words, and then you have to talk about those words with him. I did this recently, and you’ll be shocked to know that I got two words relating to chickens, and off we went.

Click here to listen.

Also, here’s a chicken in a bucket.

I thought the chicken was supposed to be in a basket.

(Broadcast 11/22/2013)

I know there are a lot of products out there to help people hide their gray hair. You can just dye it all, or you can leave some gray to look “distinguished,” or you can do just your beard, if you have one and it’s giving away your grayness. I have no problem with gray hair. I think it looks nice. Of course, as my wife likes to point out, I don’t have any, so I should shut up about it. If I was already going gray and I talked about how gray hair looks good, it would sound like I doth protest too much. I’m laying groundwork here for my inevitable be-graying. I just want everyone to know I thought this before I had to think it. Anyway, chickens, as far as I know, do not go gray. They look distinguished in their own ways, I suppose.

Now in the chicken aisle

You might recall that the Mandrell Sisters are my three Buff Orpingtons who are nearly identical (at least to my eye). This has caused me no end of grief, the thinking being that I am not seeing their uniqueness. Well, there have been some developments. All three sisters have now gone through their annual molts, and things are not the same.

The first difference I noticed was that one of them was much, much lighter than she had been. She’s no longer yellow, but not quite beige. I’d say she’s become a sort of Silver Fox, if a. that wasn’t creepy to say about a chicken, and b. foxes didn’t eat chickens. I don’t want to call her that which intends to eat her. This is what got me thinking about gray hair. She might look a little distinguished, for a chicken. I don’t know that I will go to her for advice or anything, but something about her seems more respectable than it used to.

Must be the glasses.

The Mandrell Sister who has had issues with vent gleet, a.k.a. Gleety Mandrell, has stood out from the other two for a while now. At first, it was because she had the nasty butt typical of nasty butt disease. Then it was because I trimmed off all the nasty feathers, and she was the only one with a featherless hind end. As if this poor chicken hadn’t been through enough, her molt was pretty rough, too. Her tail feathers looked ragged to the point that I thought she was being picked on, until I noticed that she was bald around the neck where other feathers had fallen out. She was definitely on the “mange” end of the molt spectrum. The feathers are coming back in, but what I’ve noticed is that the new ones are lighter, but there are still plenty of old ones that are the original darker color. I’d say she looks mottled, now, if that’s what mottled means. Almost a calico, in way. I like calico cats. Calico chickens? She looks like the equivalent of wearing clashing plaids. I’ll try not to judge.

Just like this, but more feathery.

Then there’s the third sister. She has molted, but everything looks exactly the same, like that little black dress that never goes out of style. Maybe she’s behind the times as far as what’s new in chicken fashions, or maybe she’s doing that whole retro thing. Or maybe she’s like that friend who never seems to get old. Don’t you just hate that person? I don’t know. What I do know, is that I can now tell them apart, and this is fraught with issues. Do I now give them individual names? I liked the idea of a group name, though if anything happened to one of them, how would I cope? There are three actual Mandrell Sisters. What if one of the chicken Mandrell Sisters died? Would I have to have one of the human ones whacked for consistency? I have been known to go a long way for a joke, but I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far. Yet. Should I give them nicknames, like, say, Gleety? Do I just roll with the changes? Or do I do like the third chicken, and just stay put? These are big questions. Perhaps in the New Year, I will have answers. For now, I will keep the chicken ship steady as she goes, and if a new name (that isn’t Gleety) should present itself, I will be ready. Who knows, maybe I’ll even have some gray hair by then.

(Broadcast 11/15/13)

Thanksgiving is quickly approaching, which means it’s time for two things. The first will be the beginning of news reports about people burning down their houses while trying to deep-fry a turkey, and the second will be the features on the horrors of the Turducken, which you may or may not know is a chicken stuffed into a duck stuffed into a turkey. These two things have become as much a part of Thanksgiving as anything else. I will not be eating a Turducken, nor will I be eating my chickens for Thanksgiving. I’m certainly not stuffing them into each other to make a Chichichichichichicken. No one in our household eats anyone else, and I aim to keep it that way. However, with the talk of what everyone’s having for Thanksgiving, it’s gotten me thinking about what I feed the chickens and how that changes with the seasons.

It would be kind of like this.

There are a few constants. I always give them “layer feed,” so they have plenty of that if they want it. It’s basically corn pellets with vitamins added, though you can get it in “crumble” form, which looks like someone stepped on the pellets. It’s more a tiny nugget thing, whereas pellets are obviously pellets. I have a feeder hanging under the coop, so they can pick at this stuff any time they want. An interesting thing about layer feed is that it’s basically the same stuff as some types of natural corn-based cat litter, but way cheaper. A few times in a pinch we’ve dumped some chicken feed in the litter box and gotten decent results. Though, I don’t recommend giving it to the chickens after you’ve done this, no matter how mad you are at them.

Two different things. Don’t mix them.

In the warmer months, the chickens can feast to their heart’s delight on bugs and worms and anything they can dig up out in the yard. Of course, in the winter months, there are a lot fewer of these things to choose from. We did just go through a Wooly Bear caterpillar explosion, so maybe they loaded up on those, and aren’t feeling too snacky right now. I don’t think that’s likely. They’ll always eat something else, and they’ll spend hours digging around in the leaf litter at the edge of the yard in the hopes of a treat no matter the time of year. Even it’s buried in snow, which I’m sure is not far off. It’s not the super buffet it used to be, but they must be finding something in there, or they wouldn’t keep at it, right? Maybe they’re just eternal optimists.

Coming soon to a Denny’s near you.

They’ve been getting a lot of bread ends lately, as my son generally is sent to school with a sandwich for lunch, so we go through a lot of bread. No one likes the ends, except the chickens. I would offer the ends to you if you like them, but the chickens called dibs. Greens from the garden have just dried up, but the bread ends will continue. We do eat other vegetables through the winter, but probably not as many as we had growing, so the flow of veggies to the chicken run has slowed. The bread ends are forever though. At least until my son realizes he can complain about what we’re feeding him. Hopefully that’s a little ways off. We’ve been getting good mileage out of this whole sandwich deal.

Please learn all the parts by Friday. This is on the test.

The newest addition to the chickens’ diet is yogurt. There’s a lot of information out there that much of our health may be influenced by gut flora, even mental health. I want to make sure the chickens aren’t feeling depressed in the winter months. What makes me depressed is when they get vent gleet, aka “nasty butt disease”, and yogurt can go a long way towards preventing that. Every morning I put a bowl of yogurt out for them, and they go nuts for it. One morning, as a test, I put a cucumber next to the yogurt to see which they would go for, and not one chicken touched the cucumber until the yogurt was gone. It’s also hilarious to watch them eat it, as it tends to get all over their faces, and they chew it with their little beaks. So it’s good nutrition as well as entertainment. They just get the plain stuff. No fruit on the bottom, fruit on the top, or memories of fruit from a summer program you were in back in college. The cheap stuff is the best. The chickens don’t even care what kind it is, they just dig it.

Yogurt fans unite!

In the colder months, the main thing they lose is some of the variety of treats they can forage on their own. They still get plenty to eat, and if I’m worried about it, I can spend vast amounts of money at the feed store buying all sorts of other treats for them. I think they’ll be fine without tons of treats. Waiting will let them build up their appetite for ticks and ants, and at the first sign of spring, I will release my chicken fury on the insects of the yard with renewed vigor.

(Broadcast 11/8/2013)

It seems to have gotten colder lately, and for some reason it’s getting dark really early. What’s up with that? Oh, right. It’s fall. Fall is great, but the big problem I have with it is that winter is always right behind it. I suppose winter is fine as long as I don’t have to go outside in the cold, but society seems opposed to letting me just hole up until spring. Of course, even if I could find a way to not have to go to work, the chickens are outside, so at the very least I’d have to go out there periodically to fulfill my chicken duties. And I suppose if I have to go outside at all, I might as well just keep doing what I’m doing. If you can tell me what that is, I’d be grateful.

If you need me, I’ll be here all winter.

But what about the chickens? How do they feel about winter? Well, I haven’t cracked their code yet, so I don’t quite have a handle on their feelings. However, I know that lots of people seem concerned about what I do with them in the winter. Don’t they get cold? I like to point out that they’re wearing down jackets, but not everyone catches my drift. What I mean is that they are covered in feathers, which keep them warm. They can probably deal with the cold a lot better than I can. What about putting a heat lamp in the coop? Again, they’re wearing down coats! But there’s more to it than that. There’s no electricity in our coop, and to run an extension cord all the way out there seems pretty hazardous. Then there’s the possibility that I could burn the coop down with a heat lamp. I’ve also heard that if you do give them a heat lamp, they’ll get accustomed to it, and so if something should happen to the lamp, like a power outage, they won’t be used to the cold, and this could cause problems. I’m not sure if that line of thinking is sound, but since I have no electricity anyway, I don’t have to worry about it. Chickens have been dealing with the cold without heat lamps for a very long time. I think they know what they’re doing.

Not this kind of down jacket.

Something I do get concerned about is making sure there are no drafts, but plenty of ventilation in the coop. This may seem like a conflict of interests, but it isn’t if you do it right. When I was building the coop, I came across a rule of thumb that said “think about how many vents you think you need. Now double that.” The concern with the coop is not so much the cold, but moisture. Chicken poop is very moist. If that moisture doesn’t have somewhere to go, it will get on the chickens and freeze, which is how you can come to get frostbite on combs and wattles. A big draft is going to cause problems because you don’t want a steady stream of cold air rushing through. But you also don’t want something air tight, or the moisture gets trapped. I see this come up in talks about insulating coops all the time. The insulation can also trap the moisture. Moisture is the villain, not the cold. So I made sure I put in vents up high that didn’t point right at the roost, and that’s about it.

Venty, not venti.

I did once attempt to put vaseline on the chickens’ combs when the temperature dipped into the single digits. This might have gone better if I had had an assistant, but I was there, alone in the dark, with a chicken in one hand and a fistful of vaseline in the other. Some of that vaseline did actually end up on the chickens’ combs. The rest of it ended up everywhere else. I plan on rethinking this technique.

I propose a new slogan.

I do have some problems with dealing with the water bowl in the winter. An easy thing is to do is bring it in at night. They’re sleeping, so they have no need for it. During the cold days, though, it’s a little trickier. Some people use electric heated dog bowls, but there’s that “no electricity” thing popping up again. I recently saw a suggestion of putting ping pong balls in a bowl of water, and the balls floating around keep the water from icing up. I think this really only works for temperatures close to freezing. After a certain point, the ping pong balls can only do so much. The solution I use now involves a microwaveable dog bed heater called a “SnuggleSafe.” It’s a round disk you nuke for a few minutes, and it stays warm for allegedly up to 8 hours. I put that under the water and hope for the best. I had been using those little glove warmer packets for a while, so this is a big improvement. I also put apple cider vinegar in the water, which lowers the freezing point a bit, but not enough that I don’t need something else. If it’s really cold out, the water will be frozen when I get home, but I’m gone more than 8 hours. Maybe the claims of 8 hours of warmth are true, but I can’t really tell. The chickens seem fine though, so I’ll take that to mean the system is working.

Heat lines, not stink lines.

Staying warm takes energy, so I also make sure they’ve got plenty of food. But other than that, I made sure I got breeds that could deal with cold temperatures. They’re built for this stuff. And when I start to worry that maybe it is getting too cold for them out there, I remember how many people from Minnesota or Canada have piped up in online discussions about how cold it gets where they live, and their chickens do fine without any extra help. I sure don’t want to be out there with them, but they seem to like winter just fine. I think they might be kinda nuts.

There’s no Garden Guys show this week, and therefore, no TMC. In the meantime, watch Boss Chicken dry off.

(Broadcast 10/25/2013)

Raising chickens has been full of milestones. There’s the excitement of the day I brought them home, the relief of finishing the coop (and the worry of their first night sleeping in it), and the thrill of the first egg. Not all milestones are happy ones, though. There was my first sick chicken, which now looks more like it should be counted as my first chicken to have a stroke. There was my first run in with the horrors of vent gleet, and as a result, my first time standing in the yard blow drying a chicken. I suppose if you think about it enough, anything can be a milestone. I happen to like thinking about it.

When the chickens first started laying eggs, it was December, and you’re probably aware of the fact that December has pretty short days. The amount of light chickens get has a direct influence on how many eggs they lay. Or that’s what I was led to believe. As soon as they all started laying, it was half a dozen eggs a day for a good long time, darkness be damned. We weren’t prepared for such an ovoid onslaught, but it was cool to be finally getting eggs, and nice to see the chickens all pitching in. The fact that they were really sticking it to the darkness tickled me as well. I like the underdog, or perhaps in this case, the underchicken.

Underchicken, of Saturday morning cartoon fame.

As time went on, the six-eggs-a-day rule seemed to be getting more relaxed. If a chicken isn’t feeling well, they won’t lay, and it’s even pretty normal to not lay an egg every day. Sometimes, the eggs would be there, but would be one of those creepy “rubber eggs” I’ve talked about. There are a lot of factors involved in egg production, and it’s unrealistic to think they’d operate at maximum capacity forever, or even for very long.

Summer came around, and some days we’d get three eggs, some days more. Some days they’d lay them in the nesting buckets, sometimes next to them, and in the last few weeks they’d taken to laying them on the far side of the roost, which is very difficult for me to reach. I know when I’m being screwed with, but everyone likes sticking it to the Man, and I suppose I’m the Man in this scenario. I put a plastic easter egg in one of the nesting buckets, and they eventually got the hint. And the number of eggs we got continued to fluctuate. The vent gleet episode took one chicken out of production for a while, so I knew we wouldn’t be hitting six then. The only one I can reliably even keep a tally on is Boss Chicken, since she’s in her own coop (or rabbit hutch, really) due to her handicap. She seems to be easing into an every other day routine, but again, not always. There’s fluctuation, but always eggs somewhere.

I keep a journal of how many eggs each day.

So the other day when I went to check the eggs and Boss Chicken didn’t have one, I figured it was one of her days off. Then I opened the coop, and there were none in the buckets. I felt around in the shavings, since they sometimes like to bury them, but still nothing. So then I climbed into the coop to check the far side of the roost. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zero. It appeared everyone had taken the day off. It was close to Columbus Day weekend, so maybe they felt it was a state chicken holiday or something. The only thing I do know is that the only egg I got that day was a big goose egg.

Listen to the goose.

I was initially a little worried that maybe their egg laying days were behind them, but they’re only a little over a year old, not even a year and half. They’ve got more time. I think the erraticness of their laying schedules was bound to align eventually, and there we were. The next day, we got more eggs. Next summer I may need to start thinking about what’s going to happen to our egg supply, but we should be good through the winter. That’s not to say I’m not going to start obsessively hoarding the eggs, but you might as well hoard them while you know they’re still coming, right? Right?

(Broadcast 10/11/2013)

If you’ve ever been outside, it’s probably not a surprise to you that there are things out there. You know, things: lions, tigers, bears – that whole nature trip. I often scan the darkness with my headlamp while walking out to the coop to see if I’m alone out there or not. I usually am, at least that I can see. But I think that’s only in terms of things large enough to have eyes that would reflect back at me. Certainly the tree frogs have been out there in force until it got chilly, and the wooly bear caterpillars seem to like our front steps, though sometimes it seems to be where they come to die. I fear we may be living on top of some sort of wooly bear burial ground. But dead wooly bears don’t talk, so I may never know. When I go out to take care of the chickens and it’s dark out, I often suspect I am not alone. The spiderwebs on the coop are a giveaway, but surely there are other things out there besides spiders, right? If not, why did I spend so much time on coop security?

Oh my!

With autumn here, my chicken responsibilities can be dealt with earlier and earlier. Sometimes in the summer, I would want to go to bed shamefully early, but it would still be light out. The downside of living close to nature but far from my job is that I have to get up awfully early to get to work on time. I didn’t feel right going to bed before closing the coop door, though they’re perfectly safe if I don’t. I actually leave it open on summer weekends so they don’t squawk to be let out at 5am. For some reason, weeknights are different, and I would force myself to be up past 8:30 so I could lock them in. Lately though, I can get my chicken tasks done even before my son’s bedtime. I suppose that’s the silver lining of shortened daylight. Then I can relax a little and go to bed at whatever ludicrously early time I choose.

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man constantly tired.

A little while ago I was out doing my evening ritual of checking the food and water, and then saying goodnight to the chickens, and thinking again about whether or not I was alone out there. These positively extraterrestrial looking caterpillars have been out in the yard lately. They’re bright yellow and have antennae that look like horns. They don’t seem to be afraid of the coop area, which is foolish. Chickens don’t care if you look cool, as long as you are tasty. I even had one on my arm one night once I was back in the house. I have no idea how it got on me, but there it was. I put it back in the yard, and vowed to be more vigilant about stowaways.

This is supposed to be a caterpillar.

So the night when I came in and felt an odd tickle on my leg perhaps indicated I had let my guard down once again. “That’s a weird itch,” I may have thought. Then, as it progressed up my leg, it turned to, “that’s a weird itch moving up my leg,” and then further to, “I hope that’s not a tick on my leg.” Then I realized the sensation covered an awful large area for a tick. “Oh no,” I realized, “One of those caterpillars is IN MY PANTS.” In a surprisingly (for me) quick motion, I grabbed the outside of my pant leg in my fingertips right where I felt the weirdness. “There’s . . . there’s something in my pants,” I said to my wife. She gave me a look. “No,” I said. “I mean there’s someTHING in my pants.” That’s when the strain of profanity that indicated I had no next move started pouring out of my mouth. I had trapped the thing, but if I let go, it would be loose again. “The pants must come off,” I said, and proceeded to undo all the workings of them with one hand, while still containing the pant creature in the other. I stepped out of them, released my fingers, and then shook the pants, not knowing what to expect. I half worried that it was really only an itch, and I was now standing pantless and full of swears in front of a witness. But as I shook, there, on the floor, appeared a reasonably large cricket. I understand it is good luck to have a cricket in your house, so it must be even more so if they head up your pants. Lucky me. I went to find a container to catch it in to let it loose outside, and my wife called out that not only was the cricket o.k., it was also very “sproingy,” so I’d better hurry up before it escaped. I caught it in an old takeout container, and released it near the wooly bear burial ground.

They were pants . . . JUST LIKE THESE

A more vengeful person might have put it in with the chickens as a treat for them, but in spite of the scare it gave me, I bore it no ill will. Maybe it stowed away on me because it was trapped in the coop and knew it was doomed if it didn’t. Maybe it was just a pervert. Or maybe I’m reading way too much into all of this. I often worry about the big things that may be out there sniffing around the chickens, but there are plenty of smaller ones too. I resolve to be more observant, and to maybe tuck my pants into my socks from now on.

“Hey, whaddya say I climb up your leg?”

(Broadcast 10/11/2013)

There comes a time in everyone’s life when they find they need to give a chicken a bath. Wait, what? You say that’s not actually true? Most people haven’t ever bathed a chicken? Well, this is certainly unexpected. Regardless, I recently found myself in a position where I had to give not one, but two chickens baths, and I lived to tell the tale. I may die of embarrassment once the tale is told, but you know, I’ve had a good run. To keep the embarrassment to a minimum, I’ll only discuss the first bath today.

In the 80s, even chickens had hot tubs.

Remember my discussion of “vent gleet,” aka nasty chicken butt disease, from a couple of weeks ago? Maybe not. The gist of it is that I have a chicken that had a problem that involved really nasty tail feathers due to, let’s say cloacal issues. I did everything the internet said to do: I cleaned the feathers (opting to trim off the nasty ones), I administered an oral dose of epsom salts, I put apple cider vinegar in the water, and I dealt out lots of yogurt. She seemed to be doing well, until a week later when I stuck my head in the coop to say goodnight, and I noticed her tail feathers were befouled anew. You notice these things when the coop door is righ at their rump level. I shook my fist at the chicken butt gods and angrily approached the internet for guidance.

The look on my face upon seeing the soiled rump.

Upon rereading the article about vent gleet that had originally guided me, it did mention that sometimes two treatments were necessary. In my lust for success, I guess I missed that part. But at least it could still be vent gleet and not something worse. I redid all the original treatments, and hoped that this time it would stick.

Treat, and retreat.

Then I got to thinking that the one thing I hadn’t done was give the chicken an epsom salt bath. This was suggested partly to help soften the nasty feathers for cleaning, but also to help with the affliction itself. Vent gleet can be caused by fungus or parasites, and the epsom salts can help to defeat both those things. As a good chicken dad, I began to think that maybe I should give this a shot.

The problem with giving this a shot was that the time I had to dedicate to bathing a chicken was time that I was the only one home besides my son, who I was supposed to be watching. I thought I could interest him in helping out as a father/son project, but he was already annoyed with me because I told him he needed to come outside instead of watching TV all afternoon. So taking away something he liked and offering to supplement it with something that actually sounded kind of awful was not appealing. He opted to sit in a chair out in the yard and occasionally glare at me while the rest of this went down.

The old Stink Eye

I got the only bucket we had, and hoped a chicken would fit in it. I added some epsom salts and water, and took it outside. I thought once more about if I really needed to do this. I had trimmed the chicken’s dirty feathers again, but maybe there was more going on in there that I wasn’t getting with the trimming, or couldn’t be trimmed away. Yes, I should do this just to be safe. I took the chicken and proceeded to the bucket.

An equation.

She kind of fit. I could at least get her butt down into the water. I called to my son to look at daddy, he’s doing something ridiculous. He grunted in response. The chicken squirmed a little and looked around, as if to see if anyone was watching. No one seemed to be, though we can’t rule out NSA spy drones. She sat still for about 3 minutes, and then the attempts to escape began in earnest. There was squawking and kicking, which means there was also splashing. I had a good grip on her wings, so she couldn’t flap them, but this was becoming more unpleasant by the minute, and it was never really very pleasant to begin with. I held on for a couple more minutes, then finally let her out. She was in there for a total of five minutes, tops. The instructions said to keep her in there for 20 minutes. No chance of that happening without me having a team of chicken wranglers.

I let her out in the yard, and figured since it was sunny and warm, she could dry off in the sun. At that moment, a cloud came by and somehow managed to blot out any sunlight for half an hour. I knew what I needed to do. I went and got our longest extension cord, and a hair dryer.

The cord was long.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever stood in your driveway holding a wet chicken like a baby while blow drying it, but it’s certainly an experience I never anticipated having. Cars were going by, but no one seemed to notice. The chicken lay there on her back, seemingly content. The smell of hot chicken feathers filled my nose, and I realized I had gone to a place most people never go to. I am still wondering if this is a good thing. But the chicken was dry, and so far we haven’t seen any more dirty butt feathers on her. We also haven’t seen any of the neighbors. But if we do, I suppose we’ll find out very quickly which ones saw my foray into chicken hairdressing.

There’s no Garden Guys show today, so there’s no Too Many Chickens! either. To hold you over, here’s a video featuring some chicken excitement:

(I don’t endorse Mercedes, but I do endorse chicken hijinks).

(Broadcast 9/27/2013)

Recently I’ve noticed loose feathers around the coop and run, which is really not shocking in the least. We’ve got a bunch of birds hanging out in there, it seems pretty obvious that there will be the odd occasional feather that comes detached from it’s host, and there you go. O.k., well, see you next week! Then one day I opened the coop door to get eggs, and it looked like one of the Mandrell Sisters had exploded. First thing I had to do was confirm that all chickens were in a non-exploded state. Check. Ok, so then what would make this happen? My first thought was someone was molting, but of course, being the paranoid type who likes to look things up, I decided to make sure there weren’t other, more sinister things at play.

What evil lurks in the parts of chickens?

There are a number of things that can make a chicken lose her feathers. One is a change of diet. I knew I could rule this out, since we’re very much steady as she goes in terms of the commercial food they get. We supplement that with vegetable scraps and other odds and ends, but nothing that would cause a shortage of any nutrition, or be considered a shocking change. They’re nothing if not well-fed.

They like variety.

That brings us to the issue of parasites, which always makes me a little itchy. There are plenty of little nasty critters that can make a chicken’s feathers fall out, so this was a worry. These can usually be ruled out by an examination of the chicken and the coop. Having cats, I know what to look for if fleas are involved. They leave the innocuous sounding “dirt” behind, which is their poop. It’s not as helpful as chicken poop in the garden. It’s really only good for figuring out if fleas are around. But I didn’t see any of this dirt on my birds. I didn’t see much of anything, really. A lot of parasites will leave bites or other marks on the skin, which will be a giveaway, even if you don’t see the bugs themselves. All I was seeing was lovely clean chicken skin. If chicken skin can ever been called lovely. Let’s say normal chicken skin. The normalness of their skin also helped me to rule out another nasty cause of feather loss – aggressive pecking. I had a chicken pecking at another one once, but I caught it very early on. I know what the results look like, and they aren’t pretty. Lots of blood and scabs. I’d have noticed this.

Somebody say “parasite?”

Molting can be triggered by the change in the length of days. Well, here we are with it getting darker much earlier, so I was beginning to suspect this was definitely my culprit. Chickens do go through an annual molt, and since mine are just over a year old, it looks like it may be time to ring in the New Year. As time went on, it became clearer that one of the Mandrell sisters had lost some feathers. The area around her neck started to get very thin. A typical molt starts at the neck and then moves down the body. What’s cool about new feathers is that they look a little like fish bones when they first appear. The soft part of the feather is contained in a tube, which slowly breaks away and then the feather as we know it emerges. What’s cool in concept can be very freaky in reality, especially when you look at your chicken and she seems to be wearing a necklace of spines. So edgy.

It’s all the rage in London.

There are two types of molting. One is the “typical” molt, and one is the “rough” molt. The typical molt means that the feathers fall out, but it’s sort of like a cat shedding. The chicken still looks fairly normal, but may have some spots that look a little sparsely feathered. The rough molt is something out of a chicken horror movie, or maybe more accurately, The Chicken Road Warrior. There’s a lot of skin, and weird tufts of feathers sticking out all over the place. It looks like mange, but because chickens look so odd when you can see their skin, it’s much, much creepier.

This guy knows what I’m talking about.

Luckily, we seem to be going through a typical molt. The first chicken I noticed was molting had some spiny feathers on her neck, and now her wings look a little ragged, but otherwise she seems fine. She just looks a little shabby chic. Another Mandrell Sister seems to have jumped on the bandwagon, so they can at least commiserate about the indignities of molting in front of the others. Chickens need support groups too. I just hope the feathers are back before it gets too cold. I understand the biological mechanisms behind sunlight triggering the molt, but it seems silly to have it happen when it’s getting cooler, rather than when it’s really warm out. But I assume they know what they’re doing. Which is probably a bad thing to assume, since they are chickens.

Speaking of not knowing what you’re doing, this caterpillar is in way over its head.

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