Lulu still has feathers falling out, and quills coming in, and new feathers unfurling. She is a mess. It’s saying something when the pitted old hen planter by the coop door is prettier than Lulu. But just wait till this winter. Lulu will be back to her gorgeous, graphically black & white plumage. I’ll be sure to put up a picture of her then. I owe it to Lulu – after posting these sorry views of her molting!

In the first year of life, a chicken transforms from a fluffy ball into an egg-laying marvel. Around 20 weeks of age, she’ll lay her first egg, and then continue to lay, daily, all year, even through the dark and cold winter months.If you have a breed that’s designed for egg production, such as a leghorn, you’ll get upwards of 250 eggs that first year. Not all breeds crank the eggs out like that. Some, during their first full-feathered summer, go broody. Some haven’t read the books that say they’re supposed to lay once every 26 hours, and skip a day here or there. But, usually, you’ll get plenty of eggs from your new hens.

When the chicken is about 18 months old, she’ll go through her first molt. Egg laying ceases. Old feathers fly. New ones grow in. And then it’s winter, and this time through, the dark and cold slow down or stops the egg laying. When spring comes, she’ll resume her egg-laying, but not at the pace of her first year. The shells will be thinner and more prone to breaking.

By the time her second molt and winter comes along, a farmer who needs her chickens to be economically worth it, will harvest the old hens and start a new batch of chicks. But, most of us backyard chicken keepers hold onto the old girls. They’re still laying some eggs, and they’re familiar beings in our lives. By the fifth year, they rarely lay, yet there they are, clucking in the backyard and eating their chicken pellets.

I have a flocks of mixed ages and breeds. In the big barn, my two-year old hens, Agnes and Philomena, each lay an egg a day. One of the other older hens, I think Maizie, lays two eggs a week. The others, who are in their sixth year, don’t lay at all. I haven’t kept exact records of when my hens ceased laying. What about you? How many eggs do your three-year old hens lay? What about your five-year old hens? How old is your oldest chicken?

It’s apple picking season! Every year we go to a u-pick orchard and bring home about 40 pounds of apples. We went early this year, and the honeycrisps and macintoshes were ripe. I’ll have to go back to get cortlands and my favorite, the macouns. However, the orchard did have four trees full of bosc pears. When you get them fresh off of the tree, the skin is thin and the fruit is juicy – nothing like the pears found mid-winter in the supermarket!

Bosc aren’t the best baking pears, but you can gussy them up a little and they’re delicious. I like to make a batch of baked pears, and then eat them for breakfast with yogurt. Baked pears (or, use this same template for apples) are as easy as can be. Get out a baking dish. Core the pears(did you know there’s a simple tool for this task?) and set them upright in the baking dish. Then fill the cores with good stuff, like dried fruit, or granola and a bit of crystalized ginger. Put in a cinnamon stick and a small dab of butter. Drizzle honey or maple syrup over the pears. Pour in some apple cider so that the pears are sitting in about a half-inch of liquid.

Here they are about to go in the oven:

Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes, or until soft through.

Once every few weeks a HenCam fan emails me in a panic – they’ve seen a sick, or possibly dying (!) chicken.  So far, every one of these viewers has been looking at blissfully happy and healthy hens dust bathing. A hen sprawled in the dirt does look sick. Her legs stick out. She’s twisting about, halfway upside-down. This odd behavior looks even stranger when viewed on the HenCam. What you can’t see from the coop’s camera are the deep dust baths that the hens have scratched out in the pen. When in them, the girls are so submerged that you might only see a bit of comb above ground level.

I’ve made a video of Buffy dust bathing so you can have a good view of this strange, yet normal behavior. Don’t hesitate to email me if you see something amiss on the HenCam. But, perhaps with this video there will be fewer false alarms!

I Spy a chicken in the clethra.

It’s Tina!