Poor Ingrid

Egg production is down. We spend an inordinate amount of time discussing various hypotheses. The leading two are 1) the girls are upset by Jackie’s introduction to the flock and, more recently, his sexual maturity and 2) the girls are molting. In either case, the situation is likely to resolve itself. It seems to me that Jackie and Giada have a thing going on. They are often seen strolling together in the late afternoon, taking romantic walks on the beach, and having long conversations. I have seen them in the act once. None of the other hens seem agreeable to Jackie’s advances. Interestingly, Jackie’s feathers are getting whiter all the time, especially on his head. The feathers are not so much around his face either. His eyes are clearly visible. I suspect this development is responsible for his increased foraging ability. When he first joined the flock, he pecked all around the treats, but never seemed to get any. His accuracy is much better now.

Jackie

What we have learned about molting is that it is not at all synchronous. If it were me, I’d replace my feathers in the summer when it was warm. I posted earlier that there were numerous white feathers around the run a few weeks ago. That might have been Bridget or the two fat ladies. Ingrid and Ina are molting now. Ingrid in particular looks like hell. She has but one tail feather left and has lost large patches of feathers on her wings. I asked Hilda if she thought Ingrid would be embarrassed if I posted a picture of her disheveled self on the blog. Hilda thought it would be okay. 

Half-naked Ingrd

My first thought, as always, was that she was about to die. I picked her up to see if anything was growing back.  I had never given much thought to how feathers grow. It turns out that they emerge from a shaft and look a bit like a paint brush. 

New feathers look like paint brushes as they grow in

I look forward to watching their development. I hope they grow in quickly so she can get back to laying. Hilda has taken to joking about who will collect “the egg” today. Indeed, we have many days of only one.  We are hoping that one or both of our hypotheses will turn out to be correct. A third hypothesis is that the girls are just getting old and may never lay as many eggs as they used to. Have we seen the last of six eggs a day?