Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[GregnLety]

Goldie and her unnamed roommate.

Lobo being a good boy watching over the young flock.

 

[RoyalChick]

The incomplete parts are my head scratchers too. Hazarding a guess, those are the incredibly rare/extinct types so we will never see unless we do some serious breeding specifically for those traits...........

Wheaten and Partridge are often referred to in BYC posts and I have no idea what those mean - if they are rare I will forget about them!

 

[RoyalChick]

Interesting. Hattie is a lavender but seems to have a darker head.

View attachment 3755980

The bird in the picture for lavender also has a darker head.
I am almost certainly wrong, but the lavender gene dilutes the black coloring - so Hattie is a black chicken (I know I loved her looks!) who is diluted.
That could mean that more of her black gets expressed around her head for some reason maybe?

 

[ChicoryBlue]

I think the issue is me and whether I could every really cope with them. The best model would be to give them shelter and feed and let them loose. This means they will likely come back now and then but mostly live wild. A bunch will get taken by predators - especially if raising young on nests - and if numbers get too low I restock.
I can cope with all that nature in the raw that goes on for truly wild creatures.
I couldn't cope with that for my chickens or my cats.
Somehow Guineas would be a bit in between and I would have to learn not to fall in love with individual birds and not get stressed out that some go missing.
Not sure I can do that.

You (really me I guess) can’t provide feed and shelter and not get attached, at least invested in what happens to them. Suppose there’s awful weather? You will worry. Hawks and owls will pick them off. Fox will get them too, they aren’t perfect ground evaders, and there’s a lot of fox to contend with. Remember my FedEx guy said they kept guineas as a first line defense for their chickens! To keep predators satisfied. Plus, how would you get them, as fully-grown adults? Maybe you could get a couple of breeding pairs and let them have at it, otherwise you’re going to be brooding them from chicks and there’s no way to not get attached then

 

[RoyalChick]

You (really me I guess) can’t provide feed and shelter and not get attached, at least invested in what happens to them. Suppose there’s awful weather? You will worry. Hawks and owls will pick them off. Fox will get them too, they aren’t perfect ground evaders, and there’s a lot of fox to contend with. Remember my FedEx guy said they kept guineas as a first line defense for their chickens! To keep predators satisfied. Plus, how would you get them, as fully-grown adults? Maybe you could get a couple of breeding pairs and let them have at it, otherwise you’re going to be brooding them from chicks and there’s no way to not get attached then

You understand my issue perfectly!
I think if I get chicks then I will fall in love and then it will all be terrible.
If I got a bunch of adults and let them loose I could probably cope, but that seems unethical somehow.
On BYC most people who keep Guineas do so more like free range chickens - they 'coop train' them for a few months.
I dunno. They are pretty and I do need their services!

 

[featherhead007]

Wheaten and Partridge are often referred to in BYC posts and I have no idea what those mean - if they are rare I will forget about them!

RC, Sir Jaffar is a Partridge colored Cochin:
FYI

 

[featherhead007]

The bird in the picture for lavender also has a darker head.
I am almost certainly wrong, but the lavender gene dilutes the black coloring - so Hattie is a black chicken (I know I loved her looks!) who is diluted.
That could mean that more of her black gets expressed around her head for some reason maybe?

You called Hattie “diluted”
Isn’t that kinda rude?

 

[featherhead007]

Yesterday Bob mentioned “Poultryguist”
I’m still laughing at that one!

 

[featherhead007]

You understand my issue perfectly!
I think if I get chicks then I will fall in love and then it will all be terrible.
If I got a bunch of adults and let them loose I could probably cope, but that seems unethical somehow.
On BYC most people who keep Guineas do so more like free range chickens - they 'coop train' them for a few months.
I dunno. They are pretty and I do need their services!

But they look like bagpipes!

 

[GregnLety]

a frizzled mini naked neck with an Estrella photo bomb

Goldie enjoyed that patch of clover and rye.