A Hard Molt

Feathers everywhere!

About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that Daffodil was acting strange. She was staying inside the coop and sort of staggering around a bit, kind of walking sideways. It was almost as if she was a little drunk. Maybe she had eaten a rotten apple? I decided to keep a close eye on her until I could figure out what was happening. Well, it didn't take too long...

The next morning I came out to the chicken coop, and when I tell you that it looked like a chicken exploded out there, I'm not exaggerating. Well, maybe I am just a bit, but let's just say that there were feathers everywhere! And there was my Daffodil almost bald. Okay, I'm exaggerating again, but she was definitely missing a ton of feathers.

Daffodil's strange behavior was because she was going through a hard molt. It's a bit unusual for a chicken's balance to be upset by molting, but not totally unheard of when it's a hard molt. For Daff, it was only on that one day that she was tipsy.

Can you see all the feathers around the run?
All from one chicken.

Molting is when a chicken loses his or her older feathers to make way for new feathers. Molting is a normal, healthy occurrence that every chicken experiences throughout their lives. In most cases, this happens in the Fall, as the weather is getting colder and the sun is setting earlier. Those seasonal changes trigger the chicken to replace their older feathers with new ones for the winter. 

Personally, if I were designing chickens, I think it would make more sense if this happened during the summer, so they could molt and be "naked" in the hot weather and then be ready with their new feathers in the cool Fall, right? But, strange enough, God didn't ask my opinion. :)

Our balding Daffodil

Most chickens go through their molts gradually. Gertrude and Minerva Louise are definitely going through a molt right now, too, but much more slowly. Everyday, I find just a few of their feathers on the ground. That is a regular molting experience. But of course poor Daffodil, (the odd girl out, as always), had to have the most awkward molt of all of them. I swear, that first morning, she gave her body a good shake and literally dropped half her feathers. It was like a cartoon. 

And while molting is natural, it does take a toll on the chickens. They stop laying eggs while molting. They use a lot of protein to grow feathers, so I am feeding them pellets with extra protein to help them through it. (I also gave Daffodil scrambled eggs every morning for that first week for another extra protein boost.)

She started her molt by losing her chest and neck feathers first.

A raggedy mess!

Then she started losing her wing feathers.
(eating scrambled eggs for extra protein.)

And then her tail feathers fell out!

I think she's actually looking for them here.

Sadly, it is a bit painful for chickens to grow their new feathers. The feathers grow in like little quills at first, called pin feathers, which can be very sensitive, so it was important not to pick Daffodil up while she was molting.

Those pinfeathers made her look 

more like a porcupine than a chicken!

They even look painful, don't they?

Finally the pinfeathers started opening to reveal her new feathers.

Happy to report that Daffodil's molt actually moved along quickly. Two weeks later and she looks almost back to normal. Her new feathers came in a little darker than the original ones, and we're still waiting on her tail feathers, but otherwise, she's back to looking like our cute little Daffodil.

AFTER the molt. Looking good!
Now if we can just get those tail feathers
to grow back in already!

Harvest Time

It's kind of strange that the Fall is considered harvest time, because here on Glen Hill Farm, we had way more things to harvest at the peak of the summer.

Here's a picture of our amazing pumpkin harvest. So much fun to grow! And when do you think these were ready to be picked? October? Just in time for Halloween? Um, nope. These beauties were ripe and ready the first week of August. :) About 2 months earlier than we would have liked. That's okay. We were just happy to have grown actual pumpkins.

Minerva Louise checking out our big pumpkin harvest. In August.

I tried to grow a few new things in our garden this year and one of those things was carrots. I was so excited to grow carrots! And wait til you see how successful I was. Here's a picture of my largest carrot....

I know, I know. It's just enormous. And here's what they looked like when I harvested them all.

my pathetic carrots, but they were so cute and delicious

Yeah, we're going to have to give carrots another try next year. Not sure what went wrong over here. Not sure if I bought the wrong kind of seeds? Or if I harvested them too soon? Or if my soil just isn't carrot-friendly? But even though my carrots looked pathetic, they actually were pretty tasty and so much fun to pull out of the ground! I really enjoyed growing them, so we'll try again next year.

The other new thing that I tried to grow this year-- and failed-- was fennel. Fennel bulbs are one of my favorite vegetables to roast, so I thought why not try to grow it myself? Well, the fennel grew huge, but unfortunately, it was the plant that grew huge and not the bulb (and the bulb is the part that we eat.) I grew the foeniculum volgare variety of Fennel. Not sure if that was the wrong kind? If you've had success growing fennel bulbs, please let me know what I did wrong! Thanks!

My harvested fennel plant. So huge! But almost no bulb. Fail.

My sad fennel bulb chopped up and ready to be roasted. It was terrible.

What my garden likes to grow, for sure, is tomatoes. We planted SunGold cherry tomatoes again this year and wow did they grow! Again, these plants grew so big that we literally couldn't get in the garden to pick the tomatoes. Next year, we'll only plant 2 plants.

We also had a lot of success with our zucchinis, kale, swiss chard and cucumbers which we really enjoyed and so did our chickens. (Turns out that our chickens love kale and not swiss chard. Who would have thought that they would have such selective palates?)

Jonathan even made his Glen Hill Farm pickles again this year. A smaller batch than last year, which made us appreciate them all the more.

And probably one of the most exciting things we grew this year for the first time was corn! We had no idea if this would work in our garden, and I was so proud of what we ended up getting. We planted 3 corn plants and hoped for the best. We ended up getting a decent harvest! It ended up being a one dinner special, but it was very cool that they were home grown.

6 ears of Glen Hill Farm corn on the cob

It really was fulfilling to feed my family from our garden in one way or another almost every day.

Kale chips, corn, zucchini and (inedible) fennel brought to you by Glen Hill Farm.
(potato and steak tips from Fells Market)

And speaking of feeding my family with the fruits of our labor... I'm happy to announce (if I haven't already) that our younger generation of hens have started laying for us! Matilda was our first of this generation who started the last week of August. Her eggs are a beautiful green color. A bit darker green than our other green eggs. Which makes it nice for me because you know I always like to know which hen laid which egg.

I love this picture of our Matilda, because she has the same look as the Matilda that she's named after.
(Roald Dahl's 'Matilda' on Broadway)

And happy to report that Ruby, our Silver Grey Dorking, and Fern, one of our Welsummer hens, are also now laying. They started the first week in September. Fern lays beautiful dark brown eggs, and Ruby lays adorable tiny white eggs that look almost exactly like  ping pong balls.

Fern with her very first egg

Fern's beautiful dark brown egg, sometimes it has freckles.

So that just leaves ONE hen who is not laying yet.... Charlotte, our other Welsummer hen. That's okay, Charlotte, all of us Kaplans were/are late bloomers. You'll get there eventually! No worries!

NINE eggs in one day! Well done, ladies!