Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[TX Chick Noob]

Cochins? So cute & tiny

Roadside treasures are the best! Furniture pieces, doors, windows, doghouses, lumber, mirrors, just never know what's out there! Freeways have a treasure of new things flying out of pickup trucks ~ new pipes, new mattresses, tool boxes full of tools (our special find), new couches...but most items are too dangerous to stop traffic to rescue.

They are so friendly!

Yes cochins!
My dad is a "freegan" he is always picking up stuff or setting things by the road. We are so rural that it's safer to stop, less traffic

Bobby excels at highway finds, parking lot finds, etc. As well as finding awesome deals on occasion at pawn shops.
When he was working he would frequently bring home “dumpster diving” treasure from the supermarkets he had service calls at. It is amazing what some stores throw away that is still perfectly good.

I also need a good name for Splashy. I know I am calling her Splashy or Splish Splash but she deserves something better. I may end up calling her either Elizabeth, Carina, Angelica or Calypso as they tie into the Pirates of the Caribbean theme.

I vote for Calypso.

 

[Sylvester017]

Look at those cuties!

Spent a Mother’s Day only doing what I love: reading, drinking tea, caring for my chooks and having some good family time. Great day, even had a fun thunder-hail-storm in the middle of it all and had to go protect my seedlings that I was hardening off

Chook tax: this is where my girls shelter from the rain and sun!10 weeks old!

That red one on the right...what a cutie pose

 

[knoturavggrl]

Pictures, I promised and I am delivering.

We are going to back fill around the base and there is hardware cloth under it to ensure no critters will be getting in from underneath.

This is the roost bar, yes it was two inches to short so we “fixed” it, laugh but don’t judge it is sitting in two joist hangers so I can remove it to power wash it. I still have three loads of sand to acquire, once I have it all the roost should be about 2 ft off the ground. Hopefully the silkies can make the hop up, I will add a ramp if they have issues.

The auto door, it’s on the inside because I can’t do anything the normal way but attaching the run to the shed made this necessary and it has a timer set up available so it works just fine this way.

The empty nest box from the old coop. I am gonna put down an inch or so of sand and the top that with nest pads or perhaps straw, undecided.

I may add an additional roost over this box and add a poop board on top of it which would make the bar about 3 ft high. Right now though I don’t have enough chickens to warrant doing so. I sooo suspect chicken math will do its thing and make this necessary but for now I am content to leave it as a future project.

All that is left is attaching the run and putting the feeder and waterer into the run. I can then release the clawing sassy tiny Dino’s from the confines of their brooder tent!

Let us out NOW!!!

 

[knoturavggrl]

CONGRATS!!

We have a Lifetime shed as my outdoor kitchen and love it! For the price it is extremely well built and easy to assemble. Of the other “some assembly required” sheds we have had over the years the only other one we have had that is even close is a Suncast. Just bought another one of those to use as a duck house, which we got finished well enough yesterday for them to sleep there last night. We got the Suncast because we needed something a little smaller to fit the space, and it was on sale for $350 at Sam’s.

Altogether it went well. We have done wood platforms in the past, but since they are a pain to keep level and we have the concrete mixer now we did a pad. Biggest issue we had was Bobby took all the panels out of the box the day before we assembled it, so we could go ahead and cut the holes for the “ducky door” and some ventilation. The base warped really bad from sitting on the pad in the sun and then cooling overnight.

But we managed to get it together, and after it sits for a while, fully assembled, and with a little bit of weight inside, everything should settle back down better. Especially when we eventually drill the four concrete anchors in the corners.

Here are some pics of the mostly completed project. Still have to seal around the ventilation panels, hang the light, do some other minor electrical work, and build their “staircase” of patio blocks to get in and out. Might end up having to mount a small section of 2x4 on the inside and outside of the door as another step, that can swing in and out with the door.

The plastic floor should be easy to clean out, and I can use the shelves we put in to store both gardening tools and duck supplies.

Concrete pad
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Ventilation
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Building in progress
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Is it ready?
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Looks ready
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Duckies ready for bed
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Duck Shangri-La (Still a lot of work to do. And they are going to need a bigger pond.
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I am probably going to build a low 2x2 frame around the floor in one side to help contain their shavings and might end up using puppy pads under the food and water. Will see how bad it is each day.

Yeah, in retrospect we probably should have done it the way the directions said to but alas the rouge spirit had a mind of its own. We save some money but we did not save in headache or time spent.

Yours looks fabulous! I am happy with mine so far we shall see how it holds up.

smart boy.

Wish more people could be patient and understand chicken behavior/talk....also wish I could understand what they were actually saying with their chirps/cackles

I deliberated for a bit but I have come to the conclusion that given the judgy looks I get on a regular basis - I do not think speech is something I need my chickens to have. They have enough sass without that ability

 

[Marie2020]

I took four chicks to church with me today and they were so happy to be with me. Pastor wasn’t there. I preached the sermon. The littles sat in the pet tote and chirped the whole time.

I just visualised that

 

[Marie2020]

I do know that they'll grow larger and faster and outcompete the other chicks (brown headed cowbird chicks do not push other chicks out of the nest though), but it would still be cool to observe from a ornothological point of view, because I never have before.

On top of that, here's an article by the Audubon society about why you shouldn't remove cowbird eggs from a nest.

"It’s a natural process and we shouldn’t attach human values about killing or being sneaky to the natural world."

Brown headed cowbirds are native here, so not only is it illegal to interfere with their eggs, it's also detrimental to their population.

"While permits for cowbird control are granted, it’s only done when they’re considered a threat to endangered birds. For example, in Michigan, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service traps an average of 4,000 cowbirds every year to protect endangered Kirtland’s Warblers."

And they are so very beautiful.

 

[Marie2020]

Marble and I fed the chickens earlier. I came out with the bucket, he looked at me, pecked the feeder, then the bucket, then looked back at me. Understood, my good sir! I filled the feeder and he proudly called everyone to the meal he prepared for them. he even let me stroke his wing without any fuss.
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You are a good boy Marble. For looking after your ladies and helping your Mother.

 

[featherhead007]

I just visualised that

It happened, and I am not ashamed of my birds

 

[ChicoryBlue]

Tassels failed her 3pm test so she is back in jail.
Here she is settled down on a block of ice.
I leave pre-dawn tomorrow so my poor chicken sitter will have to deal with her.
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Tassels is not broody anymore? I couldn’t find that out in a search. She is so beautiful!
I was wondering, after looking again at this great picture of her (“Tassels on ice”) - what about ice causing frostbite for her feet, by perching on it for hours? Or is that not an issue for chickens? They do walk around on snow a lot…just wondering if steady contact is an issue for them, a broody might be so in a trance!

 

[Sally PB]

Alex, maybe if some of the parishioners tell your pastor that they enjoyed the "soundtrack," they'll be invited back.