Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[ValarieF]

 

[ValarieF]

I finally managed to caught a video of Gastounet being terrorized by Chipie!

She really is evil- starts by cooing and acting all nice and then she turns on him .

I cant stop watching this girl after my own heart .

 

[ValarieF]

My arms hurt I had to nurses poke me in the arms at the same time. Got the pneumonia shot and flu shot.
Baby easter eggers how cute they were.

 

[ValarieF]

I know it's Saturday but I want to see lots of chicken pics!

 

[rural mouse]

Caturday (from 3 days ago)

 

[rural mouse]

I know it's Saturday but I want to see lots of chicken pics!

Several randomish shots from the other day

He's still hanging on to those tatty flags

 

[ManueB]

Gosh that almost makes me sad for him. Poor fellow.

Oh no! He really is intimidated by her. Poor chap.

Aw, poor Gastonet! He was being such a good boy.

Gaston looks frozen for a long time there. This is a really funny video.

Wow yep she is very bold! And half his size

I cant stop watching this girl after my own heart .

She is actually more gentle now than she was some weeks ago. She was really bullying all her ex-chicks and scaring them to death. Chipie has a dominant temper and has always thought she should be master of the universe. Because she's so tiny, it doesn't really work out.
When she arrived here in quarantine with Théo, she spent her days screaming at the ex-batts and the second she managed to escape she attacked all six of them together which of course didn't end well. She dominated Théo who was just a few months in the first weeks. He was completely subjugated. When he grew bigger than her he rebelled and attacked her, but she didn't back down, and for two weeks they were fighting for dominance. She was several times bleeding from pecks in the face but she healed incredibly quickly. In the end she did submit, but when she went broody she attacked Théo all over again.

Baby couple in January

Broody terror

However, Gaston from the start has been afraid of everything, I haven't been calling him a goofy coward for nothing. So it could take him quite a while to overcome her domination especially as he likes her a lot. Right now life isn't easy for him, because he's terrified of Théo, who for the last days has been chasing him down much more threateningly . Théo is very fast and agile but he is about a third of Gaston's size. I'm not sure if they will sort it out.

 

[ManueB]

90/10 Rule

I have just responded to the Cracked Corn article today. They quote the 90/10 rule when providing treats to chickens. I thought that perhaps a visualization of what that means might be useful.

Here is a bit of a copy of what I posted.

Chicken feed rates are most commonly expressed in studies as weight or mass not volume. Most of these studies were done to measure the delivery of antibiotics in feed. Despite that they do give a starting point to determine how much your chicken eats per day.

If we use a study done by B.B. Buck in 1985 they categorized feed consumption as a % of body weight.

So if we look at a 3.5 lb chicken, say a Polish or a Leghorn hen, they consumed 6.7% of their weight by day in feed. Let's convert lbs to ounces in order to make determining 10% easier. 3.5 lbs × 16 = 56 oz x 6.7% = 3.752 ounces of feed per day. That is about 3/4 of a cup.

View attachment 3283917

10% of that would be 0.3752 oz of corn or no more than a palm-full per day.

View attachment 3283918

Let's look at a bigger chicken, your typical layer. Not a dual purpose bird like an orpington, just a standard hen say around 5 lbs. In the study, a 5.5 lb chicken consumed 5.0% of their body weight. 5.5 lbs × 16 = 88 oz x 5.0% = 4.4 oz feed per day. That is approaching a cup of feed.

View attachment 3283920

10% of that is 0.44 oz of corn or again, no more than a palm-full per day.

View attachment 3283918

As you can see despite increasing the size of the chicken, it is still about a palm-full of corn per day.

View attachment 3283919

Léa thanks you for your article. She found it really explicative (though she would have liked a conversion to grams). Now she's trying to calculate how much she should eat

******
@ChicoryBlue Thank you so much for all the explanations on building the run. We're starting same operation on Monday (ours is permanent). But I think it will be very much underbuilt compared to yours. You're scaring me a bit with the polycarbonate - we're using it for the run and have just used some to close roof openings in our old barn, but we've been way lighter on the fixing! Well, we'll see very soon because we also have a lot of wind, so if it rips apart we'll know it wasn't enough . Anyway, your run structure is maybe not completely orthodox but it looks very solid and nice, and a pleasant place to be for the chickens.

 

[GregnLety]

I let her know

She says glad you enjoy it.

It brought a good end to a long, hard day ☺

 

[GregnLety]

Those Guinea must be getting quite big! You need to post a photo of them

They appear to be full grown. I'll get some pics this afternoon They usually greet me when I step outside which sets off my pups. Hillbilly alarm system.