Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[micstrachan]

Don’t leave us, for “Backyard Herds” we need you here too!

I think a few BYCers do both.

 

[featherhead007]

I think a few BYCers do both.

Multitasking!

 

[micstrachan]

40° and Sunny in January!

It's coop cleaning time!

Of course my helpers threw all of the new straw out of the coop onto the porch.
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They did however enjoy digging in the new straw.

This makes we want to go buy straw! Something I haven’t used yet!

 

[micstrachan]

I don’t intend to... I can hardly keep up here. The herds site is much slower paced, but I don’t have time for both, and this is my community now!

YAY!!!

 

[micstrachan]

Still nameless on the Goat front, and open to suggestions, though we have the bottle thing almost down now, and today she is in one of the Cat’s harnesses (from when we would walk them in the city). Potty training is going ok. Flower names here wouldn’t really suit, as the local Orchid names are a mouthful, snowdrops are the wrong color, clover and broom also don’t fit. She was in a cedar rootball or an alder one, old and rotting, she still smells of the earthy forest litter. She was near a creek, in a gully on the other side of the little swampy pond I’ve shown once or twice. She is obsessed with trying to eat plastic bags.

Spunk Trunks?

 

[fuentemoon]

Hey!!! (Rooster Bob is just as vaild as Treacle or Chillin in their hens eyes , I’m sure!) And, it’s so not fair generalizing based on gender like that! I am deeply offended in my poor little snowflake heart! I am personally far more engaged with my roosters than hens, unless someone is needing extra attention due to illness. I tend the Boys, they Tend the hens, we all get on fairly well.

I think it has less to do with the chicken keepers gender and if they have a Rooster, and more to do with to whom the pet, livestock, housekeeping duties are most likely to fall upon. I think in North American culture you’re far more likely to find a woman staying at home and tending the small livestock while the husband goes off to work. I’m definitely an anomaly on this site, as are you Shad, in my available area, freedom of keeping style, and in numbers of birds.

But that said, there are certainly a whole lot more ladies active here than men! (Do you like chickens? Looking for a good mate? Troll BYC until you find a local chicken lady!) Demographic and Target audience mostly, and all that. Also I don’t think mainland Europe, especially more rural areas like yours, were hit as hard by the Backyard Keeping Chicken Boom/Trend.

I am the one on BYC and the one that does all the coop building and feed buying, but my dh spends more time outside with the ladies, especially this last year since he hasn't been working.

 

[ChicoryBlue]

I'm getting the "less than 2 seconds and done" playback too. Maybe I can find it though

OK the replay works! Boy there's a lot of snake action....

 

[micstrachan]

I would think you have two layers.
New layers tend to start off with smaller eggs and lay bigger as time passes but the shape usually stays the same.

x2!

 

[micstrachan]

Well I can't put it off any longer, tonight at roosting time going to have to put the leg bands on the Marans. If not soon i'll not be able to tell any of the girls apart. This is especially true between Daisy and her daughter Clover. Clover is the spitting image of her mother, and as she's maturing and her comb and wattles are turning redder if they are next to each other the only difference is Clover has a tad more copper in her hackles. I took these pictures a few minutes ago. You tell me if you can tell them apart lol.
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Oh, gosh. I don’t know. I’ve only kept a mixed breed flock and so far the repeat breeds look WAY different from the others!

 

[Scrambles83]

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!

My 5year old just watched that video with me and she said ‘that’s a white leghorn.’
Seems like I have a little chickeneer on my hands haha