Red has gone broody after laying seven eggs in fifteen days. Snow stopped laying ten days ago and has now started moulting dramatically. Yesterday at lunch time when I cleaned up the run I picked up a huge amount of feathers from Snow including a lot of long ones which I think are mostly wing feathers and perhaps a few tail feathers.
This will mean Snow won’t come back in to lay this year which is two months earlier than last year. Snow laid 85 eggs last year. This year she has laid 45. This is a big difference but chickens can lay half as many eggs each year as the year before.
If Red starts moulting when she comes out of being broody that will mean we will just have the two newest girls laying. Hopefully though Maple and Popcorn will continue laying through the winter as it’s their first year.
Having lost two of the newer girls this year I am hoping to get two more girls in the spring.
Edit
This morning there were as many feathers in the run from Snow again and she had lost her tail feathers. Her new shorter tail feathers were underneath.
Click here to see the history of my flock.
Snow does look so different but, like them all, she’ll look pristine again in a few short weeks. Much the same here.
That is so true. They look so different during the moult but then they look back to normal in no time.
Still lovely.
They are.