Feathers floating all over the garden and piling up the sides of the chook pen. Yes, it’s moulting time for my 21 hens and roosters.

People new to chooks in the backyard sometimes become aware of the lack of eggs, look at the pile-up of feathers and wonder if they are linked.

They are. The annual moult to create new feathers needs so much protein that eggs are out of the question.

What to do? How can you re-start the egg laying? Not quickly, is the answer.

All traditional breeds of chooks need this time to grow new feathers and nothing you can do will hasten egg laying for about three months.

Chook keepers need to shrug, then take a trip to the supermarket. But the canny ones can turn to their store of preserved eggs. That’s a subject for another day.

Something to do for a longer term effect is to check the protein level of the chook food you’re dishing out every day.

This is what creates healthy feathers and is the basis for continuous healthy egg laying in the future.

Chooks need a minimum of 18 per cent protein in their food to replace feathers and produce eggs regularly.

Tasmanian grown Seedhouse food has 18 per cent protein, as does the rolled grain I buy at the Barunyah farm at Westbury. You’ll find the prices have increased this year because of grain price increases by pesky farmers trying to eke out a living.

Those cheap pellets from the pet shop usually have about 13 per cent protein. A quick look at the bag will tell you all you need to know.

My grandfather had a saying, ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’.

In the case of chooks, it applies to chook food especially, although other factors such as fresh water, good accommodation, the capacity to free range and good health treatment are other factors.

So if you want good eggs from regular layers, make sure the protein level is right.

What to do with all those feathers? Put ’em in the compost heap.

But what about chooks specially bred for eggs? Do they have a laying holiday?

Isa Browns, known in chook lingo as ‘plastic fantastics’, do not stop laying.

They’re bred to lay an egg a day until they drop, just like politicians increasing the pension age expect us to work until we drop.

But if you’ve got a flock of Leghorns, Barnevelders, Orpingtons, Wyandottes or any others, now is the time of year when you do the unthinkable and go out to buy supermarket eggs.

And just remember, happy chooks make a happy life!