Moulting hens

The egg yield from our hens is minimal at the moment and part of the cause of this is that a number of them are moulting heavily. In the photo above is Houdini, one of our maran copper blacks. In September she came 2nd in a local allotment show hen competition. It was good timing. Had the competition been a month later she would have been in the middle of her moult. You can see on her neck the stubs of the new feathers growing through. She is like that all over her body though it is less obvious as she still has a covering of feathers that hides the new growth. The hen houses are filled with feathers each morning. Whilst they moult, they put their energy into growing new feathers rather than into egg production.