As many know, Citizen Yang is also Farmer Yang.  Farmer Yang has a backyard fruit orchard as well as a flock of eleven egg-laying hens.  Prior to keeping chicken, Farmer Yang did not know that chicken lose all of their feathers on an annual basis, usually in the fall. One of our older hens, Opera, is now going through the molting process. She looks as if she was just through a bad fight. But all is normal. Molting chicken do seem to get shyer and they drop in the flock’s pecking order.  Ordinarily, Opera is a fairly dominant hen; but during this time of the year, it seems that other hens are picking on  her.  The last image is from the previous year, showing her in the full glory of her regular plumage.