Flavia & Butterknife/ Sniglet molting, Lola starting...

I never remember the timing from year to year, so I can't say if each hen has a predictable pattern?  Butterknife/ Sniglet, the small, feisty Buff Orpington. looks awful like she had a run-in with a cat.  Her neck is bare, she bald patches all over, and just the pitiful, beat-up remnants of a tail.

Flavia started a bit earlier.  She also looks terrible, but there's hope: her tail feathers are halfway out (or "in"?) again.  Hens really look bedraggled without those perky butt feathers.

I noticed this morning that Big Fluffy Lola had a wing feather sticking out at a bizarre angle.  They sometimes hang like that for hours, like a 6-year-old with a loose tooth. (I wonder if the hens make fun of each other?!  Whenever I hear people being wistful about the free and easy life of birds I just roll my eyes, and think how itchy and miserable it must be to molt.) 

With all the stray feathers, the yard is starting to look like a hawk caught something.  Herbella, the stately, old Silver Lace Wyandotte went through the process a month ago.  She looks fabulous!  But there are black and white feathers still caught in all the corners of the coop, now being rapidly joined by apricot plumes and the assorted russet one with black and white specks.