Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[micstrachan]

Lucky you. I just realized I am about to run out of eggs. WTH?! I can't buy eggs, it would feel disloyal!

I don’t buy eggs. I call grocery store eggs “torture eggs.” However, we do have pasture raised and humanely handled options here. I just go without over winter the years I don’t get chicks. I’m down to one layer right now, Flo, and saw a black feather on the ground and no egg yesterday.

 

[RoyalChick]

I don’t buy eggs. I call grocery store eggs “torture eggs.” However, we do have pasture raised and humanely handled options here. I just go without over winter the years I don’t get chicks. I’m down to one layer right now, Flo, and saw a black feather on the ground and no egg yesterday.

I do have a source for humanely raised eggs near me and I would never buy battery hen eggs for sure.
But even knowing the hens who laid the eggs are well cared for it feels disloyal to my Princesses to go shopping.
I have 4 eggs in the kitchen and 2 in the coop and I froze about a dozen for baking in winter.
Focusing on recipes that don’t require eggs for now at least. Maybe I will manage without buying.

 

[BY Bob]

Awww… sorry to have missed all this. It was a tough and busy week.

You had other things to worry about. No worries.

 

[micstrachan]

Good Saturday morning. This is a really long video (almost 9 minutes), so set some time aside if you’d like to see how I’m treating Flash’d crop impaction. I’ve completed two of four of these sessions this morning. I’d like to get the full 60mL into her before putting her back out.

If you don’t feel like watching, no worries. It’s just that little Flash has a significant crop impaction and I’m attempting to clear it without assistance from the avian veterinarian.

 

[Marie2020]

I hope my birds are not going to be ill, we have been sold bad bananas and when i looked up the problem we had it was called "Nigrospora" fungal disease

 

[Marie2020]

Hold it. How does that diagnosis, compared to the other possibilities, make this so especially horrible? I think you are experiencing the second-guessing that grief brings. Please forgive the following rant, but I hope this will ease your mind some:

It is not how much cancer you have but what & where it happens to be impinging on, interfering with, pushing against (or not) that causes pain and discomfort. People can go along with a lot of cancer in them and not know it, and I would guess chickens too. That is why cancer is such a sneaky disease. I'm being flippant but in some ways I would rather have deadly cancer than deadly infections like salpingitis, where infection eats away at you right from the get-go and one has pain right away. One can live pain-free with quite a bit of metastasis. The ascites itself causes discomfort because of volume and you did help her there. Cancer in joints and bones can be painful, yes. Unless it originates there, for most people that is close to the end of their journey. Masses in the belly and elsewhere aren't necessarily painful.

But understand that pain can change as the disease of cancer progresses. It can even go away, and then pop up eventually somewhere else. Know that it's not necessarily a cumulative experience of pain as the cancer spreads. Humans can also have extremely painful non-cancerous cysts or growths, or be filled with cancer and be fairly pain-free, it depends. It's a judgement call between patient and doctors on how to treat, what pain meds to give and when and how to administer palliative care when needed. Everyone's experience is unique.

Often, our perception of cancer patients' trials and tribulations - the severe weight loss, the paleness, the hair loss - often that is due to the treatments, which can cause nausea, taste loss, blood problems, etc, not necessarily the cancer! Humans are able to eat a lot of calories. Maybe chickens cannot make it up the way humans can? Cancer is indeed hungry, it is rapid cell division, and weight loss can be due to the inability to keep up with the demands of both the cancer and the normal cell metabolism. But humans may both lose weight or gain weight with undiagnosed cancer. Ruby was eating and pooping up to her last days as I understand it, so in my opinion she was not likely blocked until the very end.

You observed Ruby very carefully. She had what appeared to be many good days in this journey because of your care. Try to remember that.

Thank you for taking the time too share such valuable information.

 

[Marie2020]

Well, folks, this should be my last post on the thread about dear Ruby. OMG, the report is horrible. My poor, sweet baby. I wish I hadn’t kept her alive so long. Ruby did not have cystic right oviduct, salpingitis nor fatty liver. Her fat stores were depleted and she was severely emaciated due to extensive metatastic ovarian cancer (liver, kidneys, intestines, coelom). The mass did indeed obstruct her duodenum, which could explain why she was so malnourished.

I’m going to crawl into a cave now. I might be joining the cull-all-sick-birds camp. Poor Ruby. Poor, poor sweet Ruby. OMG.

Everything that has been said and more on how I feel for you.

Ruby lived longer because of you and felt safe too the end. If I were you I would hold my head high and be proud.

 

[micstrachan]

I do have a source for humanely raised eggs near me and I would never buy battery hen eggs for sure.
But even knowing the hens who laid the eggs are well cared for it feels disloyal to my Princesses to go shopping.
I have 4 eggs in the kitchen and 2 in the coop and I froze about a dozen for baking in winter.
Focusing on recipes that don’t require eggs for now at least. Maybe I will manage without buying.

I have a powdered egg replacer for baking in winter. It works pretty well!

 

[RoyalChick]

Hmmm. I think I will just do without. Feels like I would have to adapt recipes and maybe waiting will just make things more special when they are available.

 

[Blazinga]

I find this all very worrying. I am not really a dog person (I like all animals but am definitely more cat than dog person), but I am seriously wondering if I should get a dog.
I like big dogs so that would probably be helpful - I think I am a bit intimidated by the whole training aspect of dog ownership - I would only want to own a very well trained dog but I think I am too inexperienced in dogs to be confident of that.
I think as we go from fall to winter the predators will be more active (or more accurately my chickens will become even more enticing as other prey goes to ground) so the hawk issue is very much on my mind at the moment.

If I were to get a dog, before getting one I would try to find a class to get me used to directing and training them. I'm pretty poor at asserting animals as I generally let the cat do her own thing and the chickens don't nessesarily need a command system. If you are like me and don't know how to direct dogs, finding a place where you could run a trial might give you a better idea.