Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Ponypoor]

One chick (w/the taller crest) seems to be sporting a cockerel stance while the other chick has the lower pullet stance. It's gonna be fun guessing chick gender again.

And yet Georgie Girl stood up like that!! They will not be staying though girl or boy, their job was to get Georgie eating and moving about.

It will be interesting- but I likely wont know gender when I rehome them.

 

[Ponypoor]

It's super stylish

View attachment 4018225View attachment 4018226

Yes a lovely accessory for every occasion!

 

[Ponypoor]

Last post of the year: My Trip to Knisley's, which was about a week since I've been there.
Beautiful birds. I like blue birds.
View attachment 4018320
Quails. The one on the right seems to be running back and forth the whole time.
View attachment 4018322
Your typical house bird.
View attachment 4018324
View attachment 4018325
Can't forget chicken food. Whatever this is.
View attachment 4018326
This may be helpful.
View attachment 4018329View attachment 4018330
And finally, antiques.
View attachment 4018332
Today, I went on a walk but it's getting late, so I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. Happy New Year, everyone.

I look forward to hearing about your walk! I also love those blue Budgies

 

[notabitail]

Happy new year!

 

[featherhead007]

That’s an awesome photo


Re: Coco’s toe
————————-
If the toe is relatively straight just leave it, try to keep her from running.

If it’s misaligned you can try to set it if it’s not been more then a few days. I would use some cloth tape (I use hockey stick tape) make a pad for the bottom of the foot with it and stick to the bottom of the foot with the toe straightened then add tape to the top to stick to the bottom pad to hold the toes on place in a natural position. Only use some thin strips so you can see the whole foot and toe to keep an eye on it. Do not make it tight.

Keep her in the house no roosting for her. You’ll have to change out that dressing as it falls off. But the toe should set in a week or so. Birds bones heal really fast. Usually.

You can also give her 1/2 a low dose aspirin (81mg aspirin) every 12 hrs for pain and inflammation. I use the Walmart generic chewable brand it’s easy to cut in half. The ones with the enteric coating are almost impossible to cut in half. I actually have a pill splitter I use as l got tired of the pills breaking up when I cut them in half.

Another pain med to use in Tylenol, I use the Infant liquid Tylenol.

The dose for Tylenol is 10mg/kg of bird. With the infant stuff it’s concentration is 80mg/ml so a regular sized bird gets 1/4 of a cc. That would be equal to 20mg for a 2kg (4.4lb) bird. 20mg is 1/4 of 80mg.

Remember it is 10mg/kg (2.2lb) for a dose.

Regular sized bird of 2kg (4.4lb) would receive 1/4ml (0.25ml) of the infant liquid Tylenol showing “80mg/ml” on its label.

If you get any other concentration you will need to do the math to figure out dosage.

I also see a children dose of 160mg/5ml so this would be equal to 32mg/ml. 10mg of this concentration would be equal to 1/3ml or 0.33ml.

A regular sized bird of 2kg would get 2/3ml (0.66ml) of this children’s concentration.

always read the label and do the math!

Oh and by-the-way a ml and cc are equal to one another. 1ml is equal to 1cc.

Bookmarked, thank you

 

[featherhead007]

Here’s Coco in with me. Fireworks and gunfire scares her

 

[featherhead007]

Midnight and.. Happy New Year everyone. I hope those fireworks are done with for now. What a noise the neighbors make.

 

[Logar]

Happy new year everyone! 4 hours late but I did remember lol

 

[ManueB]

Oh, @ManueB I am so sorry to hear this. I always loved Piou-Piou. I wish I could say something profound, but I have nothing other than to send you my deep sympathies and I am sending you some virtual hugs

No not her. She is a staple that holds this team together

So sorry ManueB ~ so many have had losses this year

Oh no, that’s terrible! Darn weasels I am so sorry to hear this.

I am sending you and your partner 1,000 hugs

I'm truly sorry

Hang in there

Oh, little Piou-piou! I’m so sorry to hear this!

So very sorry, Manue!

I'm so very sorry for your loss.

I apologise for not having done it sooner : thank you all for the good thoughts about Piou-piou.
I'm not coping very well, it's been a difficult end of year. I still want to wish everyone at FBA the best possible outcome for 2025. I'm thankful for this thread that remains a place where we can share chicken knowledge, shenanigans, joy, and sorrows.

I am behind and learned this from the summary so I'll ask something that has probably already been asked and answered. Please forgive me but I need to know.

Did you capture/ kill the weasel and do you know how it got in?

No, and yes. Again please forgive me, I'll just quote the relevant stuff from what I wrote on different posts on my thread. I don't feel up to writing it more concisely again.

We heard screams at 6.50 just 20 mn short of opening the coop. Ran down as fast as we could and found the weasel, or marten, still in, and Piou-piou's headless body.
We did not succeed killing it, it ran right over my partner's shoulder. We're in the process of securing the door : we discovered the wooden upper panel had moved throughout the years, and forming a hole above which we could not see. We knew the run wasn't safe from a marten but we were absolutely sure the coop was 100% unbreachable.

I can't believe she's gone, it's so sudden. We always thought she wouldn't stand a chance with a predator because she could not fly, and she already survived miraculously a fox almost exactly a year ago, and a hawk.

She was our princess and our heart chicken. It will be so empty without her. I won't be holding to my social media break because I want to post a tribute and maybe speak more about it. Right now we're going through all the what if's, and feeling like we failed her. We take confort knowing she died quickly and had a wonderful last year.
View attachment 4011941View attachment 4011942

Tomorrow will mark one week of our little heart getting killed and we're both feeling blue tonight, looking at photos, sharing memories, and wishing things were different.

14_01_2023
View attachment 4015863


Our perception has shifted dramatically regarding safety and that has become our first worry. I'm now certain what we saw was a beech / stone marten. It was apparently a small one for that specie, the size of a big dormouse. It went through a hole that was four cm wide, that's 1.5 inch. So we're afraid none of our chicken places are 100% safe and the woodshed is definitely not. We think we have managed to secure the coop, unless there is an underground tunnel to the adjacent wine cave that we can't see.

So for now, our best chance to keep everyone alive is to have them in the coop.

I also feel they need time to adjust. There has been a very slight progress at roosting, and I don't need to take Théo out of the coop anymore for Gaston to come in to roost. I want to take the time to see how things turn out, how the social.dynamics shift, to see if we should make changes. They are still reacting to the stress of the attack, and so are we.

We are going to begin securing the run as best as we can tomorrow, and it's not simple as it's leaning on one side against the house's old crooked wall and on the other on a terrace dry stone wall below. It will take time to be sure we leave no gap. It's also difficult to know what to use. There is no real equivalent of hardware cloth in France. What we have that I've bought here and that we had initially used to double the lower part of the chain link mesh is very flimsy, and I'm quite sure it could be shred in time by the marten's sharp teeth. It won't work to make a solid enough apron. I might use the mesh we buy for our bee hives, we've used it to protect our potatoes and ham pantry from the rats and it seems to hold itself in time, but it is sold in small size only. Or get something specific like this which is way more expensive but seems more sturdy.

I've also bought a hunting camera and a trap that should be delivered in the next days. I am not angry against the marten, but my partner is beating himself up for not having had fast enough reflexes to kill it. If we succeed in trapping it we will kill it.

Saturday morning, coming back from running I came upon my neighbour Amelia. The marten has killed one of her hens too, on the 26, 4 days after Piou-piou. They are setting a trap for it today. We are both hoping one of us catches it.

We are almost sure it's a marten because I live next to a wildlife reserve that updates an inventory of species on the territory through their camera observations. There is a known marten presence, but no weasel, or any other mustelidae. What we saw was dark brown tabby and had a white collar.
Wikipedia says beech marten and stone marten can be used for the same animal, Martes foina (which isn't listed in the comparative you sent) but I'm not able to say if that's right : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beech_marten

 

[RoyalChick]

I apologise for not having done it sooner : thank you all for the good thoughts about Piou-piou.
I'm not coping very well, it's been a difficult end of year. I still want to wish everyone at FBA the best possible outcome for 2025. I'm thankful for this thread that remains a place where we can share chicken knowledge, shenanigans, joy, and sorrows.

No, and yes. Again please forgive me, I'll just quote the relevant stuff from what I wrote on different posts on my thread. I don't feel up to writing it more concisely again.

Hang in there @ManueB. We are here for you.