Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

Managed to get a new family photo in front of the coop.

 

[ButtonquailGirl14]

Same here! Chickens are my pets, and not something I would despose of after use. Beautiful Flock!

 

[Mimi13]

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Here is Jabber. He was crazy from the start.
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Jabber looks like a little owl in the face. So sweet.

 

[BY Bob]

Aww my 9 week old cockerel is already hitting it big Little sucker!

What a Stud! Wow!

 

[BY Bob]

If you are willing to cross the frozen tundra to the back door, hot macaroni and cheese is your reward.

 

[BY Bob]

How about one of Fluffy Butt Acre's fluffiest butts in honor of Fluffy Butt Friday. Here is Hattie's fluffy butt.

 

[HuffleClaw]

Love the name! Beautiful birds and stories

 

[HuffleClaw]

So I saw proof today that the chicks are fully grown. I was like, "Please get a room. The coop is empty right now. I don't need to see this!"

Here they were afterwards......
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Aww my 9 week old cockerel is already hitting it big Little sucker!

 

[BY Bob]

It took me a minute to figure out that was cigarettes in their beaks. Shame, shame on those two.

I was inspired. Glad you noticed, lol

 

[BY Bob]

So I am thinking that it might be a good idea to let everyone know how i came to love chickens so much that I am telling my story on a website for all to see. This will be a long post broken into at least 2 parts so please bear with me.

I grew up in a rural part of PA in the mountains north of where I now live. The "hill" where I grew up had several farms on it and we had a large track of land ourselves although we did not "farm it" for crops. We grew most of what we ate but that was as far as we went.

One day I noticed several chickens scratching in our woodline (we had a large patch of woods on the property). I got my Dad and showed him. He was sure that were from the neighbor's farm about 1/2 mile up the hill. He asked me if I thought I could catch them and then we could run them back to the farmer. I had just read a book about a boy in Hawaii who when the volcano was erupting was told by his mother to go catch the chickens so they could take them with them as they evacuated. The description on how they caught these chickens in the book was so vivid that I told my Dad I certainly could and I set out to get them. I managed to catch the 5 of them, we placed them into a cardboard box and headed up the road. The neighbor was so grateful for me catching his chickens that he offered me one of the hens as a pet. I gratefully accepted and I had my first chicken. The neighbor even gave me an old army crate to turn into a coop for her. I had no idea about chicken breeds but she was speckled black and white and laid tiny white eggs. I named her Speck. (Clever right? Hang on I get better at naming chickens!)

Apparently my Dad had gotten interested in chickens as well because a short time later 50 hens showed up at our house. However, they were not there for eggs. He must have gotten them from an egg producing farmer because we going to butcher them. I asked my dad for one to keep Speck company because I had learned that there should be at least 2 in a flock. He promised to give me one if I helped with the butchering. I did and I had a second hen. It was a brown chicken so I named it Brownie (What a clever kid I was). As we came to the end of the butchering process my younger brother learned that I was getting another chicken and so he had to have one too. He cried and whined until my dad gave him the last chicken right before it was butchered. My brother named it Lucky (Chicken naming skills must be genetic).

In exchange for Lucky my brother was supposed to help take care of the chickens. I knew that would not last and sure enough after a very short period of time my brother gave me Lucky so he would not have to take care of them any longer. I had a flock of 3 hens. Well the neighbor farmer saw my impressive flock of three and let me know that it was unsafe to have a flock of 3 hens without rooster to protect them. He promptly brought me one of his spare roosters and I named him Rooster Cogburn (Clever name again). I would have this core group of chickens for years. I trained Spec and Brownie to do tricks and Rooster Cogburn defended the flock from my youngest brother who to this day is afraid of roosters.

I had always wondered why I had I no pictures of them. Over the years I had asked my Dad and Mom that question and they always said that photographs were very expensive back then and we just did not have the money. I had given up any thoughts of photos until this Thanksgiving. While helping my Dad get the artificial Christmas tree down I noticed how empty the attic was. When I asked my Dad what was up he said that he was cleaninig it out to seal it up again and that every so often he would grab a box of stuff take it down to the furnace, burn what he could and recylce the rest. I then noticed a box of stuff with my name on it. He said that was my stuff from college. I could take it or leave it for him to burn. Thinking quick I said, I'll take it. I thought there might some fun memories in there and that I would probably throw most of it out. While I still have not gotten through the entire box, I did find the picture below. As far as I know, the ONLY picture of me with my flock. Finding it made taking the box one of the smartest things I have ever done. So for those of you who were wondering how old I was when all of this happened, this photo was taken about 3 or 4 years into having the flock.

The chickens on my shoulders are Speck and Brownie. They would fly up there everytime I came to the coop.

Rooster Cogburn was so beautiful and I am sad that I have no photos of him. Even if I were to find another in the box you can see how the photo aging would rob it of his beautiful plumage anyway.

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I thought I would go ahead and continue my story today.

Having settled in with my flock of 4 the first thing I knew was that I needed bigger living quarters. The crate was too small for more than 2 or 3 birds. My dad agreed to donate me and old shed that we had. I then ran actual chicken wire (who knew it was not for chickens!) up through the woods stapled to trees to provide a run for them. You can actually see the wire on the left side of the photo I posted with the last entry in this story. This proved to be a disaster. The chickens would be in for a few days and then my Mom would be yelling, "Those birds are on the porch again messing it up!". Little did she know what my dad had in mind and how the mess would get exponentially larger.

How were the chickens breaking out? They were not going under or over, they were going through! I started finding where the chicken wire had come unwound. I would wind it back together and assume it was a manufatured flaw I had missed. After the flock had gotten out a few times i decided to watch and see how they were doing it. I did not put the two things together until i watched Brownie break out. I watched in amazement as she put her head through the wire and then began pushing for all her might against it. Eventually where the hexagons joined would unwind until she had a hole big enough for her to push her body through. Then it was freedom for all! The whole flock was out. At that point we gave up on the run and they were free range birds.

That first spring Speck went broody. We swapped the eggs out for golf balls but she didn't care. This was just what my Dad was waiting for. One Saturday he showed up with a box of peeps. Everytime I tell this story the number of peeps raises. I think the lst time I said there were 50!) As near as I can accuartely figure it was 10-12. That night we stuffed them under Speck and in the morning she was the proud momma of a large flock of chicks. My Dad told me I could keep any hens but they were mine (and Speck's) to raise. Unknown to me at the time, they were all roosters and for eating purposes. They were not broilers but rather some large white roosters. My dad called them White Rocks.

This went on every year for almost 10 years. A quick estimate has Speck raising about 100 to 120 eating roosters for us. Of course a flock of 16 is a lot more work than a flock of 4. After a while I came to very much dislike the summers when the flock expanded. My mom hated the large flock of chickens as they dug up her gardens pooped all over her porch. Speck was so proud to be a mom and even when they were nearly full grown she would lead her flock of boys through the yard. Her tiny black and white body 1/2 their size.

When I left for college the core group of 4 had been reduced to 3 with only the loss of Lucky. My dad would eventually return the 3 of them to the farmer who had originally provided Speck and Rooster Cogburn to me. Speck would live to be 18 years old. What an amazing hen she was. She showed me what a great companion and pet a chicken could be.

However, the extra work associated with raising the eating roosters had soured me on raising chickens and that was the opinion I had when my wife saw the chicks at Tractor Supply one day..............