Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

Congratulations. Now you just need to roughly sell about 999 more dozen to even begin to hope to break even with your initial start up costs on raising chickens. Lets not look at it that way though. Depending on your egg price, let us say if you can sell 3 dozen a week we can say they the girls are paying for themselves now. If you turn around and invest the egg money into your feed bill that is.

More math. I was told there would be no math! First it is chicken math, addition and subtraction. That is bad enough. Then there is chicken calculus for flying chickens. Now we are doing chicken economics which is also calculus if I remember right. @bgmathteach must be thrilled.

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

More math. I was told there would be no math! First it is chicken math, addition and subtraction. That is bad enough. Then there is chicken calculus for flying chickens. Now we are doing chicken economics which is also calculus if I remember right. @bgmathteach must be thrilled.

Rosie will not be satisfied until we can throw Trigonometry into the chicken math equations. Yes folks, since school went back she has been doing trig triangle equations in honors geometry. I'm clueless and lost as she goes "mom what is so hard about this, it is easy". She is still claiming forensic toxicology or pathology for college. I say if she does not come out of college as some sort of mathematician she is missing her calling.

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Dear Aurora,
Berthie, or Lassie here, my human mom gets us mixed up all the time. Let's simplify it and just call me one of the Queens, I like that better personally myself. Look what I laid this morning. I added extra bloom on it and it is pink in your honor. I informed my mom she needed to photograph it, she claims it looks brown still in photo's even though it is pink in person. She cannot do anything right and now it appears us hens need to learn to take the pictures as well.

What is the point of doing the extra work so I stand out from the flock if your human looks at you and says in pictures it is brown?

 

[BY Bob]

View attachment 3374361View attachment 3374362
Dear Aurora,
Berthie, or Lassie here, my human mom gets us mixed up all the time. Let's simplify it and just call me one of the Queens, I like that better personally myself. Look what I laid this morning. I added extra bloom on it and it is pink in your honor. I informed my mom she needed to photograph it, she claims it looks brown still in photo's even though it is pink in person. She cannot do anything right and now it appears us hens need to learn to take the pictures as well.
View attachment 3374365View attachment 3374366
What is the point of doing the extra work so I stand out from the flock if your human looks at you and says in pictures it is brown?

This is a great letter. I hope she chooses this one.

 

[TX Chick Noob]

That chicken under "Bobcat tax" is playing the back of what looks like a xylophone? Innovative John Cage* approach...

"John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer and music theorist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

Very interesting information. Makes me hate to disclose that Speedy is just eating some pellets I put on the top roost for her (she is bottom hen so I try to make sure she gets some ).

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Dirt update.

He is not coughing as continuously this morning. Looking at him though he clearly still feels bad. He is wheezing but to hear it you need the stethoscope.

 

[Lexicon]

Boreal owl

Has anyone had any experience with boreal owls and chickens?

This owl has been hanging out in the tree right beside the largest of my runs.

It looks large in this photo, but it is very small. I am worried that it could fit through the fencing as gray jays regularly do. It's body is more squat than a gray jay, but it is also puffed up due to the cold.

I have closed off that run and just left the covered one accessible to the hens. Am I being overly cautious? This owl is here during the day and at dusk and is not at all fazed by our two dogs barking at it from inside the house.

Edit to add that the run is netted.

 

[BY Bob]

Dirt update.

He is not coughing as continuously this morning. Looking at him though he clearly still feels bad. He is wheezing but to hear it you need the stethoscope.

That feels positive.

 

[featherhead007]

Boreal owl

Has anyone had any experience with boreal owls and chickens?

This owl has been hanging out in the tree right beside the largest of my runs.
View attachment 3374398

It looks large in this photo, but it is very small. I am worried that it could fit through the fencing as gray jays regularly do. It's body is more squat than a gray jay, but it is also puffed up due to the cold.

I have closed off that run and just left the covered one accessible to the hens. Am I being overly cautious? This owl is here during the day and at dusk and is not at all phased by our two dogs barking at it from inside the house.

Edit to add that the run is netted.

I don’t trust owls (of any size) they seem shifty to me. I would keep your chooks protected at all times.

 

[featherhead007]

I don’t trust owls (of any size) they seem shifty to me. I would keep your chooks protected at all times.

(They also cheat, eating tootsie roll pops!)