Ah yes, chickens, the animal equivalent of every super-model gone actress and rock star. If you don't believe me, you just don't know them very well. They preen themselves religiously; engage in bizarre pecking rituals, make unrealistic demands, chase every hen in sight, strut, fight and crow for no apparent reason other than they can. Unless of course you have the palate for duck or goose eggs, chickens have you right where they want you.
It can honestly just get tiresome, and for awhile, it did. For centuries chickens lived side by side with mankind. Up until the early part of the 20th century chickens roamed the streets of every major city in America, and then they faded away. They had over stayed their welcome, trashed too many hotel rooms, the limelight had just become too much for them. Their antics could no longer get them on the cover of every supermarket rag, they needed a trip to rehab, a retreat.
The fresh air of the country side did them some good. They quickly dominated the rural market, but unlike a singing career in Europe, chickens made a come back. While they still top the country charts they have infiltrated the urban scene and even into the heart of suburbia, where they have secured extended engagements with unsuspecting managers.
It is not surprising that many of their new managers did not know what they had gotten themselves into. Chickens, which do not have paparazzi desperate to photograph them at their worst, where able to spin propaganda from their secret barn rooms. Whether it is rising with the sun, tending to its young, or just pecking at the ground, every scene of idealized Americana from nursery school books to dish towels and even into television commercials depicts a chicken on its best behavior and in its full glory. The reality of chicken's no longer in plain sight they were allowed to reach a near mythical status. How naive so many us where when we rushed home with our first box of peeps from the tractor and supply store.
You only have to live with them for a few short months, to see behind all the glitter and glue, and the smoke and mirrors. It's not only their bad behavior, their finicky eating and the truth that you are the one who really raises their young in some sort of a private school built from incubators and brooding pens, chickens, and others of their kind, molt. Similar to loosing baby teeth the new feathers form and push out the old feathers before they fully develop themselves leaving the chickens looking like a pop princess after a trip to barber shop. Chickens are also so vain this does not deter them from entering the public eye.
Being ugly is not the problem, molting is a chicken's writer's block. While they are producing these new feathers egg production drops or stops all together. But just like any pampered musician or actress, they continue to demand their scratch at the same wages, after all they have an entourage and lifestyle to maintain. The feathers need to be cleaned up regularly during this period or they will decay and produce a smell to rival the interior of any heavy metal band's summer tour bus. Guaranteed they will fall apart and molt just when you need them most. About Easter in the spring and again in the fall if you are foolish enough to book deviled eggs on the Thanksgiving menu. As their managers we get used to this bi-annual hiatus and since threats of chicken noodle soup simply fall on deaf ear flaps, you just learn to wait them out. They will get back to making us money sooner or later.
If you desire fresh eggs, you simply must learn to deal with the idiosyncrasies of these "art-teests" and yield to their whims, as I have for the past ten years. Which explains why my hens are pecking the glass of my back door. They want their morning treat of cheerios or they will attack me when I go to collect the eggs.