Saddles for riding or Aprons for cooking?

In the words of Hanna Montana - "Say What, Say What?"

My working girls (by working I mean "egg producing" of course!) are starting to look pretty shabby, partially due to molting but mostly due to playing "leap frog" with Sokka - our rooster. Their lower back feathers take the brunt of the damage and on two of the girls they are all but gone. I found on my favorite web site - Back Yard Chickens, that you can purchase Saddles to help protect the chickens during heavy breeding seasons. Some people call them aprons, hen dresses but the correct term from what I can tell is "saddles". I have found them in all shapes, sizes, colors, and of course - Price.

I decided to do a little searching and found a rough pattern on the web and after showing it to Rebecca we (and by we I mean Rebecca - of course!) decided to try to make our own and save some money as well as obtain the satisfaction of using something that is homemade.

So I guess they aren't for the chickens to use while they are cooking and even though four of our chickens are Jersey Giants they are still way to small for any of us to ride around the yard!

Rebecca has done a great job and we have found a few things we are going to change on the remaining saddles. Here are a few pictures of the first ones we made both on and off of the chickens. Hopefully this will relieve any discomfort making them into happy little chickens - and we all know happy chickens lay more eggs! Our first two lucky recipients are Penny and Guinevere.