Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

All Dressed up and Ready

@featherhead007 , Phyllis is ready for the big party tonight. When is Blu getting here to pick her up?

 

[CrazyChookChookLady]

Perhaps one of Mr Bunny's family was the target?


What's a chicken wipeout please CCCL?

HAHAHA!! A chicken wipeout is a slip and fall. Someone lost their footing in the snow and I saw chicken tracks, feather prints, and smush of snow, and more chicken tracks. I'm sure who ever it did it quickly looked around (much like Hattie) to make sure no one saw it and quickly moved along.

 

[Shadrach]

In my experience, the fast molts come in almost as quickly as the drop. Poor Ester is so miserable. Dorothy is quite bossy and piggy about the beef liver treat. I just don’t know what’s best. I don’t want to stress Ester anymore than she already is. Dorothy seemed like the best friend choice, since they were raised together and hop the little poultry fence together. It’s just barely freezing at night, but the coop is well ventilated and not insulated. I’m not sure how many degrees warmer it is in there.

Here is this morning’s frost:
View attachment 2469342

Here is tonight’s set-up:

I'm not convinced this is a good idea. The hens here when they are moulting keep their distance from the other hens. I'm not sure why this is, maybe they are concerend about getting pecked, or having pin feathers crushed.
Fay and a couple of others in the past had serious moults; BYC worst moulting picture type moults. They didn't even want to go into the coop with the others at night. I made a perch partiition for Gedit when she had a bad moult so she could be in the same coop, but not have any hens able to perch right next to her.
This year both Moon and Fudge used the nest boxes when they moulted as did Bracket, Nolia and later Tack.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm finally shaking a tail-feather regarding making my chicken scrapbook, which first entails printing out photos of all my girls. I realised that I have very few photos of Emily, but I do have some videos. I've created some stills from the videos, which are not the best as the camera on the iPad isn't the greatest, but it's something. So in advance of Friday, I would like to share with you Emily's fluffy butt. RIP Emily, sweetpea.

View attachment 2469569

I've been doing this. Some chickens unfortunately I don't have any photographs of.

 

[Shadrach]

Lovely photos Shad. The chicks are adorable.

I didn't know that there were donkeys there!

There are four.

 

[BY Bob]

I've been doing this. Some chickens unfortunately I don't have any photographs of.

Please share when you are done. I think I may start doing the same.

 

[Shadrach]

Broody Trance

I have been contemplating the broody trance and why ladies that have no eggs seem to get stuck in the trance and forget to leave the nest to eat, poo, and bathe. I believe it might be a good idea to give them some ceramic eggs. Let me explain why.

I went back and looked at all the video I shot of Sydney when she was hatching. She was very active. She did not seem to sit still for more than 5 minutes at a time. Between grooming herself and moving the eggs around every 15 minutes or so (I need to look at the chart to find the average again) there are not long stretches where she stares into nothingness. Perhaps with more responsibility, i.e. eggs to take care of, they will not zone out completely and forget they have other stuff to do.

If nothing else it would be an interesting experiment to see if their behavior improves.

Remember, Sydney had a 100% hatch rate. I believe that she knew what she was doing. This is 30 minutes of her setting. If you can watch without getting bored, you will see she seems to be in motion most of the time.

I think you've got this right. If you're going to let a hen sit, then she should have eggs under her. As you've noticed, they are quite active when sitting. My timings here are every twenty minutes they'll turn an egg or more. They are still in a trance though. I've found this out when picking them off the nest. The trance has something to do with the leg lock is what I beleive.

 

[BY Bob]

Sentinel

Hattie is getting a break today. Sansa is on Sentinel duty again today. This is happening more and more often.

 

[Shadrach]

Gaaah I just about figured out how to get pics from my phone to the PC quickly (my charger cord is USB and that connects to the PC, yay So much better than through our wifi). I just loaded pics from this morning. I'd use the BYC app on my phone but it really is quirky and annoying, my cursor jumps back and forth and I'm editing more than writing

Yes I would like to figure out how to put video up here but haven't yet. Create YouTube channel, load it to there, link here to there, yes? I DID figure out how to edit them down to short lengths on my PC though, once I figured out the transfer issue.

I am on the expanding horizon of tech learning. Ex: I would post a pic of my face but it would need a spoiler and I haven't figured that out either! Baby steps here (loved that movie, what is the name? haha).

This morning they all ate together, the waterers are also together on the right side. After they ate enough for a first meal there was a little face-off. Then lots of scratching around where the treats were yesterday, in search of more, followed by more looking and mirroring, mostly by Popcorn and Peanut. At one point Queenie held quite still in a firm pointy-face low-head stance while the Buckeye kept her head high and stretched-out, but moving it. Here they were beak-to-beak. Later Queenie was standing up against the fence and let herself be touched (it seemed) through the fence on her side feathers by a curious Buckeye beak.

View attachment 2469813

They're fence fighting and you should try to prevent it. It's easy for them to get a
toe caught in the mesh.

 

[Shadrach]

This is the kind of behavior I am interested in. "Queenie held quite still in a firm pointy-face low-head stance while the Buckeye kept her head high and stretched-out, but moving it."

Did it look like this?

What you are seeing exhibited here in the video I posted is called fence fighting.

The peck at the ground and then lift head and peck at each other is the fence fighting. Did you see Queenie peck the ground and then at the fence or Buckeye? If so, she may very well be trying to intimidate the Buckeye in question. I am pretty sure that my resident baddy Aurora was doing so to Sydney.

Now that is my read on the behavior. Others will say they have no idea why chickens fence fight and more interestingly, why some chickens do and some don't. Additionally it is also interesting to note that once the fence is removed in the majority of cases no fighting ensues.

I learned much of this from @Shadrach and I am glad to pass it on.

I should have read ahead....