Henrietta has been looking dreadful the last couple of days, her moult is quite severe and it’s making her grumpy.
As the leader she’s usually a benign dictator to the rest of the flock, only giving the briefest of reprimands when absolutely necessary. But this moult has taken it out of her, she’s tired and grumpy, she’s basically had enough of it now.
Its a huge strain on a chicken to regrow feathers, in order for their tiny bodys to make that effort they stop laying for a while and all their resource is expended on growing beautiful new feathers. I help by adding protein to their feed, but ultimately they do all the work.
The good news for little Henrietta is that all her hard work is paying off. Its not really visible yet, she still looks very tatty, but look closely and you can see her pin feathers growing through. In another week she’ll be back to her old self, but with a beautiful new plumage to show for it.
It’s very true that sometimes its darkest before dawn. Sometimes you are working your hardest, giving it your all, and the results don’t seem to come.
Just keep going, hard work and effort will bring results, you might just need to give it a little bit of time.
Chicken Nuggets 