Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[notabitail]

Well, good night y'all! Headin-for-bed-in!

Good night!

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Thirsty Thursday and Fluffy Butt Friday
You cant see the bowl but they are all crowded around drinking.
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Fluffy Butts
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Tiny fluffy butts, Brownie is laying again and seems to mostly ignores the littles. They still follow her though around though when they are out foraging.

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Bonus cute tween pics and video. Notice the color pattern difference? I suspect I have two Roos and three pullets. Lore has clear red big comb and wattle development. Story has a big comb but no red and no wattles yet. But the color patterns seem to seal the deal. If anyone has any guesses on this I’d love to hear them.
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They are adorable. They may still hang around Brownie for a little bit longer. Mine tend to still spend time with their mothers for a week or so once they start laying again. I am following how these guys feather out. I would assume the speckled sussex will follow a similar pattern. Then again they have entirely different chick down colors so I could be completely wrong on this.

 

[Marie2020]

Oi slave. Get us back outside our Palace/coop immediately

 

[Marie2020]

We are going to have to sack this woman. The ruddy cheek of it all, making us wait while she pours her darned coffee.

 

[Marie2020]

I'm telling you now, you just don't do anything right and is it any wonder why I'm complaining.

 

[Marie2020]

Looks like a nice painting

Yep. Dripping brown paint
That my princess

 

[Marie2020]

I am just missing Eli. She rounded them all up when she wanted to go in. I never really noticed how important that was to me being able to close up for the night.
Now they are running wild without parental oversight!

I'm so sad she's gone.

When Amber went flexi took over then Agatha and flexi left now these two sort of take care of each other. It's funny how they adapt

If Tina needs something princess screams for my attention too help her and then if it's princess Tina does exactly the same.

 

[Ponypoor]

The "Enabler" enables herself.

I love when I have all 28 of them following me up the alleyway, and all those feet pitter-pattering behind me

 

[TX Chick Noob]

All caught up again. Here are comments on a few things (I had a lot more marked but deleted as those conversations are pretty much over now, )

Get a mosquito zapper: crispy skeeter snacks for the chickens....

DynaTraps are even better. Suck in and trap/dehydrate mosquitoes and other bugs. Then I dump them out for the chooks every now and then.

A farewell to Eli: The little chicken who lived large

I am mourning the loss of my little Eli. She was only with me for a very short time, but she burrowed deep into my heart with her quirky ways.
She never showed any respect for the forces of gravity, and was always on the move, so I do not wish for her to 'rest in peace', but rather to fly to the limits of the sky.

Eli was all about food
I loved Eli and Eli loved food.
In her first few days with me she demonstrated her willingness to embrace the unconventional in order to achieve her goals: sunflower seeds were her drug of choice and there was nothing she would not do to get her beak on some.
Here she is on her first day with me tunneling under her sister Babs to reach the seeds without getting too close to me.

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Later she would burrow under my thick winter jacket to reach the seeds I kept in an inside pocket.

Let's face it, food was the way to Eli's heart!

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She was bottom of the pecking order but she was so fast and so fearless that she always got the lion share of what was on offer.

Eli was a troublemaker
She was full of mischief. You can see it in her cheeky little face.

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She led expeditions to tunnel under the fencing designed to protect the shrubs (useful fact: 3 chickens can dig up a year old, 3' shrub in under 3 hours).

And of course the first thing she did in any circumstance was go up. Here she is testing out the rafters on her first day post quarantine. Those are human sized doors and the floor is steeply sloped. She is a long way up!

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She led her sister into roosting in the rafters going up to about 11' seemingly without much effort.

Eli was a beauty queen
I have a thing for black chickens. Eli took that to a new level because she was black but with flecks of gold. Sometimes she wore green (to match her green snakeskin boots), and sometimes she wore purple, and many days she wore both. I could look at her for hours.

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Eli went broody
At the end of May she suffered some kind of neurological event - maybe even a fit - and she fell off the roost (fortunately not the rafters). Immediately afterwards she took to her nest box and became full on broody.
Every day I carried her out of her nest and she chowed down on the sunflower seeds in my hand while I took her outside for some personal care time. She flared her tail and hackles at anyone in the vicinity. Who knew such a small chicken could make herself so big? She was magnificent - like an ancient battleship in full sail!

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When her eggs didn't hatch (there weren't any eggs under her) she finally emerged but she had one more thing to do.

Eli was an Aunty
Although her eggs didn't hatch, Eli adopted the five chicks I had brought in while she was broody. They were already a month old when she first encountered them but she immediately responded to their little peeps. And maybe even more amazingly they seemed to accept her as their mother.

They were always together. She called them to her and they came. She showed them the good places to dig. They were always talking to each other so I am sure she imparted lots of chicken secrets to them. I hope so.

Here she is showing Sylvie how the worms gather in that little patch because it is usually damp.

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I know it is fanciful, but in retrospect it is hard not to believe that she knew she was dying and wanted to bring a clutch of babies into the world before she left it.

Eli's last day
Eli's last full day with us was on Sunday June 11, 2023. She sat quietly in a sheltered part of the Chicken Palace. She seemed calm and content. She was alert but napped from time to time.
I sat on a tree stump right near her so she would know I was there but not stress about me reaching for her.
Together we watched the other chickens running around and digging in the shrubs. I got lots of pictures.
Bernie stopped by and I was on high alert. Bernie was never vicious to Eli, but Bernie is a big chicken and Eli was quite small and even a well intentioned nip from Bernie can be painful. But Bernie stopped and groomed Eli's head, cleared some bits of bedding dust off her and then moved on.
Babs came by a couple of times and groomed Eli and preened herself and sat for a while.
Her brood of almost grown 'chicks' came and visited often. They are high energy and I was worried they were disturbing her - but she seemed happy to have them around her.
Here is the last picture I took of Eli - it was taken on Sunday evening just before dark. Her kids are settling in around her a bit puzzled why she is not in her usual spot.

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Also fanciful but I feel very sure that the chickens knew this was Eli's last day and they were coming to say goodbye.

Just at dark I shooed the little ones into the hen house and gently carried Eli in as well.
At 4am Babs triggered the coop cameras by coming down off the roost to visit Eli.
Eli was still alive.
An hour or so later Babs triggered the camera again coming to check on Eli, but Eli was gone.

***
It has been an emotional couple of days for me with feelings of guilt and loss, but also of awe at how these wonderful creatures behaved to her at the end.
Mostly now I am just so happy that Eli got to experience what I am sure she believed was motherhood and I hope she has passed on a lot of wisdom to the next generation.
I feel reasonably confident she didn't teach them to roost in the rafters as they never witnessed that directly, but as I am not fluent in Chicken, who knows what she might have told them!

Farewell Eli. Fly to new heights. Know you were much loved and that we all miss you.

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@RoyalChick I am SO sorry for you loss. She was such a sweet chicken, and this is an excellent tribute to her. I hope you can take some small comfort in knowing she lived a very good life. She had a beautiful palace where she could fly high, and even got to be an auntie to some wonderful chicks for awhile.

Well, I have to break the news somehow.
I will tell you, although this is through many tears on my side.
Lhicken is not here anymore. She is gone. I am cremating her even though there is a fire ban.

I am also very sorry for your loss. And I agree with what many others here have said, you could keep your user name in tribute to her. There are many people on BYC whose names are in tribute to a chicken that they lost.

Yes! I'm a volunteer at a Pro-Life Boot Camp for middle schoolers so that has been taking up a lot of my time and it is fun. Oh, and my birthday is tomorrow.

Belated Happy Birthday!!

 

[BY Bob]

I like the little legs on the waterer - and the sleek legs beside it! (Doing the ever dainty 'cross-legged curtsey,' too!)

This a new waterer that tractor supply is selling which grows up with you chicks. The legs can be folded all the way in, unfolded to have that height, or all the way like that one is. I got it to test it out. I had to enlarge the hole which let the water out as it was too shallow for my grown ladies.