Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

Lilly and the Littles, the Saga Continues

So I set out on Wednesday to get video of Aurora eating from my hand. You might say I was on a mission because of what had happened the night before. So I headed out in the morning with my phone, cup of coffee, newspaper, and bag of cracked corn to see if I could recreate the magic of Tuesday night.

Things were different right from the start. The Big girls assumed I was there to spend time with them. This included me keeping watch while they all sunned themselves. Eventually they moved on and I thought here's my chance. I tried calling Maleficent over with her call "C'mon, C'mon". I knew if Maleficent came, Aurora would at least follow along.

I put my hand down with corn in it so they could see it.

C'mon, C'mon.

Maleficent saw the corn but seemed reticent.

C'mon C'mon

Then I was startled as someone showed up, but just not the hen I was looking to attract!

Lilly came up from behind me. This is also actually kind of big deal as she rarely eats from my hand and almost never alone. There is almost always Hattie or Patsy present before she will do so. This time she was alone. It was very cool. However, now I had to feed her before I could entice the Littles. Good thing I brought coffee as this was likely to take a while. On the plus side, the Littles had shown that they were keeping track of her now. Definately in their best interest.

After a while Lilly was full and she ran off to go scratching with Hattie while Patsy took a nap. I decided to try again.

C'mon, C'mon

Over Maleficent came. Aurora followed just a little behind her. Next thing you know, I have the video i was looking to capture. (This time I was smart enough to use the phone's camera correctly!) The video is below. Our snack was cut short by another visitor. Watch for them at the end of the video.

 

[BY Bob]

Foodie Fridays!

One of the things I have enjoyed about our little flock is all of the different foods they like to eat. Therefore, I am going to try and share another chicken eating something video every Friday. This Friday's video will not be that strange but it does introduce the GREATEST HEN OF ALL TIME! Of course that is in my opinion, you may not agree. If you look at my avatar, the little pullet in the background is Daisy. She was the best alpha hen we ever had and my dearest friend. She passed around this time last year and it is still raw for me.

She was Queen Bee and as such she felt the need to each from fancy dishes from time to time. In this video you will see her eating a treat mix that had corn and mealy worms among other things in it. She has decided to only eat the mealy worms and you can see her tossing the offending corn out of the dish as she eats. Enjoy!

 

[WhoDatChick]

Foodie Fridays!

One of the things I have enjoyed about our little flock is all of the different foods they like to eat. Therefore, I am going to try and share another chicken eating something video every Friday. This Friday's video will not be that strange but it does introduce the GREATEST HEN OF ALL TIME! Of course that is in my opinion, you may not agree. If you look at my avatar, the little pullet in the background is Daisy. She was the best alpha hen we ever had and my dearest friend. She passed around this time last year and it is still raw for me.

She was Queen Bee and as such she felt the need to each from fancy dishes from time to time. In this video you will see her eating a treat mix that had corn and mealy worms among other things in it. She has decided to only eat the mealy worms and you can see her tossing the offending corn out of the dish as she eats. Enjoy!

So sorry you lost her!

 

[WhoDatChick]

Patsy is not feeling well. She started lagging yesterday. Today she is off on her own. Based upon her poo I believe it is coccidia again. I treated the water with Corrid yesterday and I'm switching to medicated feed today. We had the same problem this past summer when it was so wet and the past 3 weeks have been just as bad with standing water everywhere. I'm going to have to go to apple cider vinegar all the time moving forward.



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I'll check her craw tonight at bedtime and in the AM as well.

Okay, so they can get sick when things are too wet!? I did not know this

I am trying to catch up in this thread...

 

[WhoDatChick]

Sad Day
Thursday was a sad day as Jabber is no longer with us. It had to happen but it is still hard. The yard and house are eerily silent.


Rest in Peace our friend.

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That is so sad... he was simply gorgeous!!! But I do understand...

 

[WhoDatChick]

The Human Roost

@aart this one is for you

I've been trying to retame the littles so my process is to go sit in the run with them every morning for an hour or so. Give them some scratch and mealy worms and get them used to being around me again. Then in the evenings I let them out for supervised free range. Having had a Hawk attack my chicks last fall, while they were in a protected run, there is no unsuprvised free ranging.

Maleficent has been taming much quicker. She is a very curious young lady and has been pecking at my shoes and pulling on my shoe laces. Here is Maleficent around my legs yesterday morning.
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Aurora has stayed at arms length. I have also observed that Aurora is clearly the Alpha in their little group. She is actual quite emphatic at reminding Maleficent of her place not just pecking her but even pulling on her neck feathers.

I noticed Maleficent measuring me up yesterday morning. Doing that neck thing they do when trying to decide how high something is to fly up onto. Let me also say that Maleficent has been going to the roost everynight but Aurora wants nothing to do with it and yells at her until she comes down and joins her in the house to sleep. Maleficient did not decide to hop up yesterday morning, but the signs were there.

Last evening I let them out for their two hours of supervised free range and brought a treat, spaghetti. They had never seen spaghetti before but my other hens go crazy for it. Here they are with their first piece of spaghetti.

Well after they had eaten their spaghetti and scratched around for an hour or so, Maleficent came around me. Normally they stay far away when not trapped in the run with me so I saw this as a very good sign. After a few moments she started sizing up my leg and before you know it, up she came. Here she is just after she arrived.

After a few moments of looking around, she sat down and snuggled. I could have died. She melted my heart.

Aurora stood off talking to her but she did not care. It only lasted a few minutes but it was so sweet. Eventually she hopped down and they went off scratching again.

It was dreary and drizzly yesterday and after 90 minutes of sitting out there it was getting old. The warmth of my brief cuddle had faded away. The bigs had all gone to bed but the littles were squeezing every last piece of daylight before they went to bed. Then Maleficent decided to stop by again, only this time very little thought, one jump and she was up on my leg, then she moved to the arm of the chair next to me and from there to the back of the chair where she settled down for a moment. Ok I thought, a new roosting location. I can get you easily from there no problem. Here she is on the chair back.
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Aurora did not like this one bit but she must have thought I need to join her. She went to jump directly onto the chair but there was no cushion and she fell through the seat before I could catch her. The next thing I know Maleficent is standing up and talking to me. She proceeds to walk across the back of the chair to my shoulders and settles on my left shoulder, nuzzling my neck. Aurora has started yelling from the ground and before I can react has taken off and is flying towards my face. (this is where I picture aart swatting her from the air) I froze in shock. She cleared the brim of my hat and landed on my head!

I tried to take some selfies of the situation as I could not believe what was going on. Here are a few.
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I called my wife to come see this and this is the photo she took.
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It took me a while to realize this but Maleficent had decided to sleep on me for the night. As I said, Aurora is clearly the alfa hen as from my head she started trying to bully Maleficent. Now my head is not flat (in case you were wondering). Somehow she had the balance to sit on a hat on my head and reach down to my shoulder to peck at poor Maleficent. This ended after a while and I swear Maleficent was purring as she tucked her head around my neck.

I decided to use the situation to my roost training advantage. I let it get pretty dark as you can tell from this picture before I decided to remove them from my body and put them to bed.
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With much squawking and complaining, I got them off my head and shoulders and placed them not in the house but on their roost where they had to spend the night because it was too dark to move. That was Aurora on my head just before I moved them to their roost. Hopefully tonight they go to bed in their coop, not on me.

That is too funny and oh so sweet!! Are they EE’s?

 

[BY Bob]

That is too funny and oh so sweet!! Are they EE’s?

They are Easter Eggers. I'm so excited to have them. They are already full of personality.

 

[WhoDatChick]

They are Easter Eggers. I'm so excited to have the . They are already full of personality.

They really are! I love my Kelly... she is so quirky and the sweetest chicken I’ve got! That’s why I just HAD to get more! I just got three and they are one week old now... but I’m starting to wonder as their feet are not green

 

[BY Bob]

That is so sad... he was simply gorgeous!!! But I do understand...

They really are! I love my Kelly... she is so quirky and the sweetest chicken I’ve got! That’s why I just HAD to get more! I just got three and they are one week old now... but I’m starting to wonder as their feet are not green

If you look Aurora’s feet are green but Maleficent’s are black. She definitely looks like an Easter Egger, except the legs. I love her no matter what. She is just a special chicken already. She is very curious like all my leghorns were. I like to watch her explore everything. She drags Aurora along. It is truly fun to watch.

 

[BY Bob]

Coop Improvement

We had 1/2 a sunny day last weekend and I decided to try and take advantage of it by improving the coop a little. We built the coop 2 summers ago so it is not quite 2 years old yet. Despite all of my best planning, there are still some things that could be improved. I believe that only by use do we really find all of the flaws in things. You can design away but in the end, you have to use it to truly understand what works and what doesn’t.

I plan to put up a coop design and building post one day but that will be a lot of work and so I keep putting it off.

One of the core features oof the coop design is that both ends are doors that open so that I can easily clean the coop by pushing out the straw with a push broom. Simple. The door not he right opens over the porch. There is access to under the coop via under the porch. The porch is removable so that the door on the right side can be opened easily. The door on the left covers the entire side opens all the way down to the ground. Here is a photo.

A couple of problems have arisen with this setup. One is that when the ground freezes in the winter the door can get stuck on the thrusting ground. Two, the door is a little heavy for the hinges and sags as well. Three, the door creates a dead end in the runs. Everywhere else escape is possible. I knew this was true but I realized I did not like the situation when Aurora was under the house exploring and Lilly trapped her there. I actually intervened and opened the door to let her out.

So in order to correct the situation I decided to create a drop door out of the bottom half. Here is how I did it.

You can see the portion under the coop with the door open.

I took the door off of the hinges and cut off the portion that covers the running under the coop.

You can see the bottom hinge still on the bottom section. I had to move that hinge up to support the upper half. I did my best eyeballing it but the door closed in not quite the same place as before. This meant that I had to adjust my latches once I had the top portion rehung. Patsy was not waiting for me to finish. She grabbed the premier roosting spot and Hattie joined her.

Next up I attached the lower portion to the bottom beam with hinges and placed a latch on the upper door so I could latch it shut.

It has turned out very well so far and it enabled me to let them out to free range today without having to stand in deep puddles. This turned out be an unexpected benefit!