The Good Life
For first-time chicken owners, moulting is a distressing sight.
Joanna from Auckland squawked, “You’re certifiable!” Here in Masterton, Joanna squawked, “Book, book, boooook”.
Masterton Joanna, who is named after Auckland Joanna, does not think I am round the twist. Or perhaps she does. It is hard to tell with chickens. What Auckland Joanna and Masterton Joanna have in common, other than the squawking, is that they are both beautiful, blonde and bossy.
Masterton Joanna is moulting. This is a shocking thing to witness for first-time chicken owners. The silly birds do it in autumn and we have already had four decent frosts.
Joanna emerges, gingerly, from the coop in the morning.
She hops, where previously she galloped – a galloping chicken is something to see. She looks both diminished, having lost almost half of her beautiful golden feathers, and embarrassed. She also looks pissed off.
I don’t want to say that she is a narcissist, but I have in the past caught her admiring her fullfeathered reflection in the French doors. When I told Auckland Joanna this, her response was, “Well, why wouldn’t she?” It is probably the chicken equivalent of taking a selfie. Another thing the two Joannas share a fondness for.
We now know, after exhaustive research, that it is completely normal for a chicken to moult in autumn. Still, we felt she needed a boost. I already give the chickens porridge in the morning. Sometimes I give them bananas in their porridge. They are as keen as monkeys on bananas and as keen on porridge as a Scotsman. They also get seeds and lettuce and they are supposed to get very expensive chicken pellets, but they are gourmets and turn up their beaks at that offering.
A moulting chicken needs extra protein. I made Joanna and her non-moulting sisters suet cupcakes with peanut butter and seeds. I put them in organic, biodegradable, possibly free-range, brown paper, mini cupcake cases. I put daisies on top, for enticement. They looked like throwbacks to those hippy-dippy late 70s books, the Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (the signature recipe of which featured broccoli stems stuck, supposedly enchantingly, in brown rice). The chickens spat the daisies out, ignored the cupcakes, and ran off with the paper cup cases.
A picture of these cupcakes is what elicited Auckland Joanna’s “you’re certifiable” declaration. The Joannas really are kindred spirits.
The next day we went to Seeds & Cereals in town and bought a sack of black sunflower seeds. I said to the chap on the till: “Do you have any worms, if that’s not a rude question?” We wanted mealworms, which are good for moulting chickens, apparently.
They have everything at Seeds & Cereals but they didn’t have any worms. We went to Farmlands, where I repeated my request. They were bemused. They have hundreds of customers who have chickens and had never had a request for mealworms before. They eventually found some packages lurking, hideously, on a shelf. I can see why nobody buys them. They look like maggots; they cost $46.
In the car park we saw John, the bloke we buy our firewood from and secretly call the Lord Mayor of Masterton. The Lord Mayor knows everyone and everything about everyone. He introduced us to a couple who also have chickens. I was complaining about the bad behaviour of our hens and they said we should get a rooster, to keep them under control. “We got an animal behaviourist in,” I said. “They’re from Auckland,” the Lord Mayor explained to them.
We took our gold-plated maggots home and gave a handful to Joanna. She ignored them. I can’t blame her. They are the chicken-fodder equivalent of weevil-infested quinoa. I took a picture of the worms and sent it to Auckland Joanna. She replied with emojis of bilious green vomiting faces. We put a picture of moulting Joanna on Instagram, which Auckland Joanna follows. “Joanna,” we wrote, “is not ageing well.”
“Neglect!” squawked Auckland Joanna. Honestly, she’s certifiable.
I was complaining about our hens and they said we should get a rooster, to keep them under control.