Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

You can grow apples there ?! That's awesome, you must get some cold temps or it must be a variety that was developed for warmer climates. Apples generally need a frost spell to develop fruit, here we regularly get -25c and they are cold hardy. Apples grown wild and their fruit is glorious in apple pie.

I have an issue with Peach trees and cold hardiness, but so far my two Peach trees are still here, and fruiting. Much to my chickies delight and the Japanese beetles that eat everything in sight..

If you want to see true bliss for chickens feed mushy peaches infested with Japanese beetles - I can't wait till this summer so I can get videos of them scrambling around catching them!

Fruit and protein! I like it.

 

[BY Bob]

At least the vet was able to rule out a couple of things. As they say no news is good news.

I hope Lilly picks up with the antibiotics. May the other test results reveal something treatable.

Thanks ACM.

 

[BY Bob]

All this talk of diet has me thinking of poultry and their requirements - outside that which commercial growers dictate. As I am sure most research has been done for fast growing meat birds or heavy laying hens.

I would say in the real world feral chooks are going to eat whatever they can find, bugs, fallen fruit, small reptiles (thank you fluffy for eating that snake!), Small mammals (was that mouse tasty Pangoo?), Etc.

The one thing I noted with my cousin's hens when they arrived at my place they were very heavy, now they have skimmed down and I think exercise is the big thing, along with the frigid temps here, I am not so worried about their scratch grain and left overs I throw to them. I am betting that there extra calories help with the cold weather and of course all the roaming, jumping and flying about in the barn helps.

Bob and I have similar climates so I think extra calories in treats and scratch might be mitigated by the calories burnt staying warm... Just a thought.

It is one of the reasons that I give them corn on really cold days. The added calories help to keep them warm.

 

[BY Bob]

I wasn't very detailed in my earlier post. I'll close that gap now.

Some time ago (it feels like 18 months) the vet took a look at Peggy's liver (as in surgically - he opened her and looked at her liver) and made a confirmed diagnosis of hepatic lipidosis, noting her liver had fractured and she had internal bleeding.

It was my fault for giving too many treats because the hens loved treats and I loved seeing them excited for meal worms or bread crusts or whatever.

Back then, they were on a 17% protein blend for layers, made up of "mash" (shaped like a crumble but with nutrients for layers) and grains. Perhaps Peggy was selectively eating her favourite grains and ignoring the mash.

The vet said

• High protein pellets 24/7
• Foraging
• Cottage cheese
• DMG
• Milk thistle
• Biotin
• Choline
• Almost no treats
• If I must give a treat, it had to be fresh food like lettuce, carrot, apple, tomato etc

I feed the four supplements mixed into a nightly mash (ie pellets softened with water). I give it in four bowls, one per hen, with maybe a quarter to a half teaspoon of cottage cheese on top. They come running and the bowls are usually empty by roosting time.

Peggy has thrived. They all have.

Until she sat for four weeks recently. While she was sitting she did not get the evening dinner. She ate regularly and maintained good habits, but she was zoned out at dinner time and I didn't want to mess with her body clock by getting her up again. Her poops went black. I presume her liver bled again. She's ok again now that she's been back on the regular diet for a few weeks.

Mainly for this reason, I won't let her sit in future. (But also she killed the chick and now I don't trust her with hatchlings.)

That's the full story of Peggy's liver.

For your hens, I think what you're doing sounds good. But I would be tempted to let them fill up on chicken food whenever they wanted to and I would keep the chop to a minimum.

Would it be possible for your new coop to have two apartments? One apartment for the retirees and their diet, the other apartment for the layers and their diet? Still the same flock while foraging around the garden, but living as next door neighbours in the coop. Friendships would stay strong but there might be fewer scuffles at roosting and better dietary outcomes.

(And I share your fears about corn, mealworms and pasta, your friendship for Bob, and your pain in bringing up these thoughts )

Thanks MJ, Peggy's story surely is a cautionary tale.

No one should have any pain bringing things up to me. I am not going to bite anyone's head off or throw them away for having suggestions about my tribe and their well being. I know it comes from the heart and I consider it all seriously.

 

[BY Bob]

Wonderful. I believe in sharing produce so I get some apples but so do the deer and the bears and the chickens.
It is the raccoons that bug me. They will tear off an ear of corn, take one bite and then discard it and pick another ine until there is none left for anyone else!

Raccoons are rotten animals in many ways.

 

[BY Bob]

While you do not yet have all the answers I'm very happy that Lily is still with you. Hopefully the Iron Beak has plenty of time left. My daughter sometimes reads over my shoulder and she caught where Lily was sick and she was praying for her yesterday as well. I had to let her see this morning that for now she is ok. She also now wants to do something this summer, but I told her I will have to check with you first BY Bob. She knows I'm hoping to hatch and keep a Corona daughter this year, she wants to name our keeper Lily in her honor.

That would be truly wonderful. Of course you can!

 

[BY Bob]

So yesterday evening me and Rosie took a walk up the road to the house where I got my silkie eggs from last year. Rosie is friends with her son and they invited us up to see their new baby goats. I agreed to go with Rosie simply because I had yet to personally see what Branch and Poppy's parents looked like. First off, the baby goats were adorable and I do want the boy out of the 4 she has. Rosie was in heaven in the middle of the pen with the babies bouncing all around her and the momma's trying to eat the hood off her sweatshirt. Then I got sidetracked, the silkie coop is right beside the goat barn. They were not what I was expecting to see. I was told Branch and Poppy came from a all black flock, there was only 1 actual black silkie hen in that coop. The other 4 hens are blue, just a dark enough blue that could be mistaken for black but blue none the less. Branch's daddy, he's stunning. really dark slate grey body, and a copper head and neck. It explains why both Branch and Lil Bit have some sparse copper feathers in their hackles. Lil Bit had more of them than Branch does. To be honest I was so surprised with their colors that I asked her was those actually the silkies I got the eggs from and yup, the only silkie's she's ever had. Then I took a close look at her hens sizes because I've always thought Poppy was so tiny. Her hens were about the size of Branch, none of them were small. I will never know now, but, it reaffirmed my off and on suspicion that there was something internally wrong with Poppy. I'm very confident the black hen was Poppy's mother, she is the only one with a vaulted skull, and looks identical to her just twice her size. I was also once again offered some eggs to hatch when her hens pick back up laying again. I told her I'll think on it, but it sounds like a fair trade. 5 Branch x Chiquita eggs for 5 eggs from her girls. Even if I do decline to take any eggs I will make sure when she's ready for them to ensure she gets some Chiquita eggs. After all she did give me the eggs that led to my favorite boy Branch.

That is very interesting but I find myself wanting to see photos.

 

[BY Bob]

I've had similar thoughts: and add extra calories in fall/winter when forage isn't available. They know when the ants start turning up (had a swarm of flying ants last fall: they went bonkers for those) and in spring, tear up much of the ant hill. As more insects wake up, they eat much less of the ants (also depends upon the type of ant: they don't like carpenter ants). They also spend more time digging through the horse manure in the paddock below us in late winter/early spring on warmer days: chance of bugs. In high summer, I still provide a little bit of scratch mix to get them started in the cool morning air and have pellets available to them....For the most part, they ignore the pellets and forage all summer. so far, no snakes or ground squirrels, but a few mice, lots of grasshoppers (some pushing locust sized)and whatever else catches their fancy. I haven't seen them going for mosquitoes, but those are so fast and come out at bed time, that I don't think they've tried them. I did pick up (on clearance) a rechargeable mosquito zapper to try this summer: "crispy fried bug snacks". Testing will probably start may/june.

Mine love the crispy mosquitoes from the zapper. I use it to get free chicken feed.

 

[BY Bob]

Yes, good point. I could be wrong, of course. But I feed way less treats than Bob does and three of my four necropsied hens carried excess body fat. It killed one of them. The only one who didn’t had very advanced cancer.

I did not mean to imply this was Bob’s fault. There are many factors that affect health. But I stand by my suggestion of reevaluating diet, regardless. I don’t like being lectured to, either, so it was not easy to write. However, I felt I wouldn’t be a good friend if I didn’t mention it, no matter how uncomfortable it is.

Bob will do whatever Bob wants to do with his birds and I will continue to hang out and support him, whatever his decisions are.

That’s it for me this morning. Gotta get to work. Have a great day, “peeple!”

I would have been disappointed if you did not share your thoughts. I am truly grateful that you did.

 

[RoyalChick]

Is it from a jackalope?

Most definitely!