Autumn Chicken Updates

We ended up rehoming Toey to a friend of a friend. I have been told that she settled into her new home seamlessly. Here at Darwin’s View, her absence was felt most by her former BFF Flopsie, the hen who kept Toey company through her pecking-order trials. With Toey’s departure, Flopsie plummeted to the bottom of that pecking order; in the chicken world, no good deed goes unpunished.

Fortunately, coming to Flopsie’s rescue was her sibling Rosie, our wanna-be-a-rooster hen who has an alarmingly long and vicious-looking rooster spur growing out of her dainty left leg. Mornings, she can be heard performing her version of a crow. And, like the good roo she wants to be, Rosie has kept Flopsie company and protected her. Peace reigns in the coop, if not in the world.

In the meantime, the autumn molt has begun. First, one feather. Then another. One or three more. And then, one morning, all their feathers fall off and the chickens are wandering around naked to the elements. Maybe a smidge embarrassed because they are not those fabulously round, fluffy, and robust creatures they seemed to be.