Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[sean_wonder]

we bought 6 leghorn chicks

Are those chicks the very same as the ones in your profile picture?

 

[BY Bob]

Are those chicks the very same as the ones in your profile picture?

That story is yet to come.

 

[BY Bob]

Earlier I talked about Jabber "giving the wing" to the girls. I caught him doing his sad courtship dance on the icy snow the other day. He lowers one wing and tries to dance a circle around his victim. Check this out.

 

[biophiliac]

Earlier I talked about Jabber "giving the wing" to the girls. I caught him doing his sad courtship dance on the icy snow the other day. He lowers one wing and tries to dance a circle around his victim. Check this out.

I feel like it would be cruel to laugh, ... oh well

 

[sean_wonder]

Earlier I talked about Jabber "giving the wing" to the girls. I caught him doing his sad courtship dance on the icy snow the other day. He lowers one wing and tries to dance a circle around his victim. Check this out.

Is Jabber flirting with Lily and Patsy or Lily and Hattie in this video? All the same I find it hilarious how the girls immediately back away. Cooties!

 

[BY Bob]

Is Jabber flirting with Lily and Patsy or Lily and Hattie in this video? All the same I find it hilarious how the girls immediately back away. Cooties!

At the very beginning of the video with the exceptionally lame short version of the wing, he is trying Lilly. Then with the, dare I say long version of the wing, he is trying Patsy.

 

[BY Bob]

Happy St. Valentine's Day from Fluffy Butt Acres resident happy couple!

 

[BY Bob]

It's Fluffy Butt Friday at Fluffy Butt Acres. How about a fluffy rooster bum bum courtesy of Jabberwocky! Enjoy!

 

[BY Bob]

We're had an old fashioned starting contest today between our cat Davis and Lilly. It went on for what felt like 10 min. Davis won. He is rarely distracted.

 

[BY Bob]

My dear wife and I have been married for 31 or as I like to say Thirty Onederful years. There are certain times that I simply cannot deny her, hence the 31 years.

One Saturday my oldest daughter was home and we had to run to Tractor Supply for litter pan liners and food for the cats. Tractor Supply had the only litter pan liners that my wife liked so there we went. Everyone decided to come because they knew the chicks would be there and they wanted to see them. We did it all the time.

"Look how cute."
"That one is standing in the water."
"Did that one just poo in the food dish!"
"They are just too cute for words."
"OK lets get out of here."

This time was different and my wife couldn't take it. She wanted chicks to raise. I was immediately opposed. I knew how this would work out. Just like my brother she would give them up. She would last longer but once they were no longer cute little chicks she would tire of them and I would have a decade of chicken responsibility thrust into my lap. All that work required to take care of all those meat roosters came rushing back.

"No" I said, "they are too much work".
"I'll take care of them"
"You don't know what you are getting into"
"You do, you will help me"
"No"
"My friend Jody has chickens, we can do it"
"We can do it, I just don't want to"

Honestly she was wearing me down. Then I saw the sign, 6 chicks minimum. We do not live way out in the country. We have the largest lot in our development but a development it is.

"There is no way we have room for 6 chickens, the mess, the coop, etc."
"What if i can find someone to take 4 of them?"
I thought this was my way out so I grabbed it. "If you can find someone to take 4 of them, you can have 2."

She was thrilled. She immediately called her friend Jody. She already has chickens, whats 4 more? Well apparently 4 more chickens was more than Jody could bear. No was her reply.

We have all seen people whose dreams have been crushed, whose very joy has been sucked out of their life by say a pass interference that wasn't called (see New Orleans Saints). Those photos of fans so devastated that they cannot leave the stadium until hours after the sporting event. Those people looked cheerful compared to my wife. She was destroyed. I have never seen such utter devastation on my wife's face.

It was so bad my daughter came to me and said, we have to get her these chickens Dad. Look at her. So without any place to put them, no coop, no brooder, no anything, we bought 6 leghorn chicks (supposedly all hens), a heat lamp, chick starter, a food dispenser and water dispenser and headed home. I told her we had to find a home for four of them but she did not care. She had her chicks. Here she is holding one of them.
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At first I thought an old aquarium would be big enough for the chicks, not even close. I remembered an old foot locker my youngest had used at college that had gotten left at our house. However I needed to cover it or the 3 cats would have a field day with the chicks. My oldest was an engineering student in college and she reminded me that she had brought some chicken wire home which she had used for a college project and we had a lid. The chicks had a place to grow up. My wife was thrilled, my oldest loved the chicks. All was good.
View attachment 1666893

Only I was thinking of the future. I did not have a shed like my dad to donate to the chickens. At some point soon they were going to need a coop.............

The Coop
Well my wife lived up to her promise and she loved those chicks. She did hold off on naming all 6 knowing that 4 of them would have to be rehoused at some point and that if they were named it would be extremely difficult to let them go.

Soon they were growing into pullets and we needed another housing solution. We could not keep them in the trunk much longer. The source of our adventure had a couple of you assemble coops that looked to be the solution to our problem and they seemed attractive enough to be in our backyard (according to my wife). This is where the biggest mistake we made occurred. We trusted the housing recommendations provided by the coop manufacturer. The coop (and enclosed “run”) we selected was supposed to hold up to 6 chickens. In the end it would not be big enough for 2.

So decision made, off we went to the local Tractor Supply to purchase our coop. Imagine our surprise when they were sold out of the one we wanted. Of course through procrastination and overall busyness of our life we had waited too long to get a coop. The pullets were too big to stay in the trunk any longer. We needed a coop and my wife wanted THAT coop. Tractor Supply found one in another store 75 miles away. So off we went.

Now as I have said before, we are suburban people. At the time we did not own a pickup truck or SUV, all we had was my 2009 Jetta. It holds quite a bit especially with the back seats lowered. However, there was no way this coop, even removed from the box, was going to fit into the Jetta. The side walls a roof were just too big. So we purchased some straps, fortunately I always have a blanket in my car (in this case my oldest’s Kansas State blanket) and onto the roof went the sides and roof. Here is my wife with the load on the roof of the car.

Here is the coop assembled and awaiting the pullets.

Here are the pullets in their new house

Not long after placing them in their new house did I learn that they needed a roost. The coop supposedly had a roost but you had to remove the floor from the coop in order for them to have one which made absolutely no sense to me. So I built one out of an old post hole digger handle, some pieces of a serpentine belt off of our old minivan that we no longer had some screws. I cut the handled to the width of the coop, drilled pilot holes in the ends, placed a small piece of the belt on both the inside and the outside of the hardware cloth and then suspended the roost by pinching the hardware cloth between the serpentine belt pieces when I drove the screw into the handle. This enabled me to build a roost higher than the coop and nesting boxes. Here is a close-up of the end of the roost.

View attachment 1677065

Here they are on the roost. Unfortunately only 5 of the 6 fit at any one time. There was always one sleeping at the top of the ramp. Of course since we were going to drop down to 2 soon, I let it go.

This became one of my favorite and most annoying things about the chickens and it wasn’t even their fault. There was always something that had to be done to make this $300 plus coop work for them. I loved coming up with the solutions but they frequently had to be done in the worst conditions as that would be when I uncovered them.

Of course by building the roost “outside” the tiny coop area, I was setting myself up for issues when winter arrived. At this time winter was the furthest thing from my mind.