Molting Chickens

So our chickens are molting. If you're not familiar with that term then you either 1) have never had chickens or 2) you don't really care what it means and you don't ever plan on having chickens. Well we do have chickens, four in fact. We started out with 6 but after realizing Betsy was a rooster we shipped her off to a farm and then sadly Mary our other black chicken decided to keel off on us one day. I was reduced to tears in the chicken coop but after a few days I recovered. (Don't worry, I only spent a few minutes in the chicken coop, not a few days.) One thing about having a farm or even animals is that you learn about death real fast and real hard. Back to the molting. Molting is when chickens start losing their old feathers and begin to grow a whole new set of feathers. It's a very messy process and one that is extremely annoying for a chicken owner who relies on the egg production for her every baking need. While a chicken is molting it doesn't produce eggs. All of the chicken's energy is going towards growing new feathers. The chicken doesn't have enough energy to grow new feathers and produce eggs at the same time. I know the chickens need a new set of feathers but I have cookies to bake gosh darn it! It feels so wrong to buy eggs when I house and feed and clean up after four perfectly heathly chickens in my backyard. I believe this is when the farmer would then eat the chicken. Hey, there would be less feathers to clean up anyway. Well, we have a rule in our house and that is, "We don't eat family members." Some people would argue that we eat the eggs and those could potentially become family members. Well that's just not true. You have to have a rooster to fertilize the eggs in order for the eggs to one day becoming a cute fuzzy chick. Even if the egg is fertilized you're not guaranteed that the egg will hatch. The chicken has to be allowed to sit on her egg for a while in order to incubate it. We collect our eggs, when there are eggs to collect, every morning so there is no way one of our chicken eggs could possibly become a chick a.k.a. a family member. I did some reading on molting and chickens molt from early fall to early spring. Are you kidding me? I had no idea when we decided to have chickens that this would be the case. Well, I guess I have to let nature take its course. Not like I have a choice anyway. I've tried coaxing, yelling, demanding and even pleading but to no avail. Those darn chickens will not lay an egg for me. We have plenty of poopy down feathers all over the chicken coop though and my chickens are going to have nice new feathers for the spring. So molting. That's like getting rid of the old to make room for the new. It's a reoccuring theme. Maybe I'm supposed to learn something from all this. The thing is, while we're getting rid of the old, production may stop in other areas of our life. We don't have the energy to get rid of and produce at the same time. So sometimes we have to just work on the getting rid of part and not worry about the producing. The chickens need the new feathers to keep them warm and healthy so that when they get back to laying eggs they can do it well. When we're getting rid of the old and the new is coming in it's making sure that we're prepared for the work ahead. That we stay healthy while we're doing what we were put on this earth to do. I love my chickens and I will wait patiently for them to grow their beautiful new feathers and when the egg production starts up again I will be even more thankful for that beautiful, freshly laid egg. I love my life and I will wait patiently for whatever new is supposed to grow in my life and when the production starts up again I will be even more thankful for that beautiful new plan set out before me.