Moulting continues. The flock looks so neglected.
A few mornings ago, I found a pile of light coloured feathers at the bottom of the ladder. They loked like Big Bird's feathers (yellow), but I could see it wasn't her.
Later, I saw Nora (our oldest hen, 10 years old, blind in one eye) standing quietly in a
cloud of little feathers. The scene reminded of PigPen (in the Charlie Brown cartoon).
I walked up to her and could see a mounting pile of feathers around where she had been standing. As she walked off, she left a trail of feathers behind her.
The poor girl is 10 years old, is still laying the odd egg, nd now she's moulting!
I noticed that a couple of the girls had dried carp clinging to their bottoms so I came inside, whipped up a large batch of scrambled eggs, armed myself with a brush and gloves, and set about catching and inspecting each and every one of them
Some of the girls are happy to be caught. They've worked out that it involves something tasty. Nora, Phyllis, Poppy and Kathryn..all done in a few seconds. They loved the scrambled egg. I then had to
set about capturing the others. They are nearly all moulting, so no one wanted to play jumpy uppy.
Part way through the proceedings I caught Shelby sneakily stealing some scrambled egg.
I ended up having to "chase" (walk behind) the girls into the runs so that I could corner and catch them. I'm not surprised they don't want to be caught. Some of them had new feathers coming - just the shafts pricking through the skin, and this is really uncomfrotable for them. It's difficult to pick them up without causing them more discomfort.
I did it with as little handling as possible, and everyone enjoyed the eggs.
