Some chickens are fast molters, some slow molters. It’s mainly genetic. It’s more about how fast the feathers fall out than how fast they grow back though there can be some benefits to feeding a bit higher protein during this time. As was mentioned, some can be over it in less than two months, some may take five months. The fast molters can look really ragged they lose so many feathers a time, with the slow molters you might not noticed they are molting if you didn’t see feathers laying around. Production breeds like RIR’s tend to be fast molters, decorative breeds not so much, but each hen is an individual. There are plenty of exceptions to these trends.
The feathers tend to fall out in a specific pattern, starting around the head and working their way down. One way to get an idea of whether your hen is a fast or slow molter is to look at the wing feathers. With slow molters they tend to lose one flight feather at a time and in order. You’ll normally see just one feather totally missing and the ones that have fallen out growing back in a nice organized pattern. With fast molters you might see a few flight feathers missing in groups. This link has drawings that show what I’m talking about.
http://msucares.com/poultry/management/poultry_feathers.html
Some chickens will return to laying as soon as the molt is over and they have built up their body reserves. Some will wait until the longer daylight hours of spring. Again production breeds tend to come back into lay sooner than decorative breeds but it is an individual thing.
Building up the body reserves is the main benefit of upping the protein during molt, though it does help the feathers come back prettier and maybe just a bit faster. It does not cause the feathers to fall out any faster. In the wild food is normally scarce in the winter so it often takes a while for them to build up their reserves, but since they are domesticated and we provide them plenty of food during the winter many tend to come back into lay pretty early.
Daylight is a strong trigger in them releasing a yolk to make an egg. For some just the sun coming up is enough of a trigger to kick them off laying after their reserves are built up. These are the good winter layers. Some need to see the daylight getting longer to trigger that process. If you gradually increase daylight when the molt is almost over you can normally kick them off to laying earlier, especially the not so great winter layers. Don’t expect instant results, they have to make changes to their internal egg making factory to get it ready to go back into production. I’ve butchered enough hens laying and not laying to see the magnitude of the changes it takes to go from not laying to laying. As always, some handle it better than others.
Gr8athearts what you describe sounds very typical this time of year. Both RIR’s and leghorns are production breeds so they should be able to handle the molt pretty well. Give them a chance to rebuild their body and you will be in for a great year of them laying.
