Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Marie2020]

Melting for molting is somehow a particularly cruel substitute as our poor half-naked chickens endure below freezing temperatures!

I hope your girls will be ok. It's ever so worrying

I'm really worried about both amber and Tina who she keeps plucking. One minute I'm annoyed with amber the next I'm worried about her.

Talk about split personality, I certainly have split emotions with her. I adore Tina and she screams for me too help her. I had too segregate amber this afternoon it's get really bad.

We keep having warnings of snow, but yesterday was hot. Last night was really cold I don't know when or if the snow will come but when it does we get it very bad here

 

[BY Bob]

Tina looks the same but I'm seeing amber plucking her a lot. Amber's nasty at times and molting I don't know what's going on with her

This spell check keeps altering my words even when I correct them back . I wrote molting twice and again now and it keeps altering it to melting.

I am constantly at war with spell check. I have even looked up words that "new" I was spelling correctly that it did not seem to know. It can be very frustrating.



Chicken tax

 

[BY Bob]

Haha! We usually have snow by Halloween, so it's right on time!

I had to laugh at poor Bistro trying to fly to the compost bin without touching the awful snow. She flew three to four feet, landed in it, shuddered, and immediately took flight and made it the rest of the way!

This reminded me of poor Aurora last winter.

 

[featherhead007]

Tina looks the same but I'm seeing amber plucking her a lot. Amber's nasty at times and molting I don't know what's going on with her

This spell check keeps altering my words even when I correct them back . I wrote molting twice and again now and it keeps altering it to melting.

Slap your A.I !

 

[micstrachan]

River is sick again.

She had a swollen weepy eye this morning and kept trying to nap standing up. I took her to a different avian vet as an emergency and he is going to give her an injection of doxycycline weekly for 6-8 weeks. One ear was blocked and she’s got bad thrush again. She’s not eating and is looking miserable. I suspect I am going to have to syringe-feed her nutrients for a while and get Nilstatin into her. Poor girl.

Poor River!

 

[micstrachan]

Monday Mugs

I especially like Hattie's wattles slapping her face.
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OMG, yes, the Hattie photo is amazing!

 

[micstrachan]

Sansa's Molt

Sansa has been molting since before 9/7/21 as documented in this post.

Post in thread 'Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock' https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...es-stories-of-our-flock.1286630/post-24881422

That has he molt s over 60 days now. I am getting concerned. I have never had one last this long. Plus is seems her old feathers have fallen apart but not out. Bald patches would make more sense. Look closely at these photos.

Has anyone ever seen this before? I am getting very concerned that something is wrong.

View attachment 2899074View attachment 2899075View attachment 2899076View attachment 2899077View attachment 2899078

Bridge molts slowly for a few months every year. Roxy is taking it really slow this year, too. I wouldn’t worry yet.

 

[Shadrach]

Thank you all for the commiserations. I expect quite a few more will die.
It was a bit of a shock because Volt did not seem in a critical condition until it was too late. I don't know these chickens that well yet and there are quite a few of them. It will take me time to fully check each individual and if possible treat them.
I haven't even got the basic stuff done for all yet.

 

[micstrachan]

My understanding is that new feathers grow from where the old ones fell out. It would be unlikely to find pins in between the old ratty feathers.

I have seen pins dispersed between ratty old feathers. Flo looks a little bit like that.

 

[RoyalChick]

Yes, if you look she does have some new nontattered feathers and her bum is mostly covered in new fluff. So she has replaced some.

Well that is reassuring from a warmth perspective and also makes some kind of weird genetic disease less likely.
I did some academic searches and seems we don't know much about molting really.
Dotty does not appear to have molted to any meaningful degree whereas Minnie same breed, same age has been hit hard.
Diana doesn't seem to do a conventional molt - she loses the odd feather throughout the year and now I am noticing these really worn out feathers here and there that are not being shed.
Hopefully this is just a quirk of Sansa's and she will stay warm with her new fluff - outer feathers are a waterproofing layer so don't let her go out in the wet.
Hoping it all is OK.