Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

Oh my goodness! How could I resist this celebration @BY Bob?View attachment 3182791
Whip - having a conversation with me
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Ms. Meatbird being demure
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Bad girl Allele being...herself
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Pingu hoping you notice her blue tinted feathers
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Dr. Tacky making me laugh
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Naenae, my sweetie
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Mr. Piscia (identifies as Mr.,but lays eggs) trying to hide the lustrous iridescent feathers in a dust bath

It is so wonderful to see them all again. Thank you some much for stopping back in, sharing them with us and joining in the celebration!

 

[BY Bob]

Celebration photos... let's see...

Stormy, checking out what is on the other side of the nest box door:
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Darl, my Buff Orpington roo. RIP, buddy.
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Little, aka, Little Girl, or Little Bird, who laid the very first egg of any of them, all 19 grams of it
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This is May. I sure wish the picture quality were better, because I think she looks happy.
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Of course I have more, but not easily findable. Congratulations, @BY Bob!

I'm so happy you stopped in and shared your wonderful chickens with us again!

 

[BY Bob]

And holy cow! I just spent like 2 hours looking at 10k celebration photos

This thread (and chicken photos) can have that effect on you!

 

[BY Bob]

So lets skip ahead a few weeks. Momma hen's chicks are growing good. Tuff and Toothless reach a age where they decide they hate each other and one must die. I'm the bigger person and let Rosie keep Toothless and find Tuff a home. I'm also looking at these chicks thinking surely out of the 4 there should be a few girls. At least a 50/50 split if things go the way they should. Wrong, the rooster fairy LOVES me. Really, really loves me. 3 cockerels 1 pullet. Now if your keeping count, that is 7 chicks hatched in 2 groups. 2 pullets and 5 boys. I shall forewarn you.....to this day, it has not got any better in those odds.
The lone girl Nugget.
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And her brothers.
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Keep it coming. I'm eating this up!

 

[BY Bob]

By now I've found backyard chickens, and this thread. At first I was a sporadic poster. I had made a point to read all the posts before I joined which even then at the time was no easy feat. I also was really interested and taking a shine to BY BOB's 2 black hens Patsy and Lilly. They were assumed to possibly be Marans or mixes although we will never know. Shadrach also was a regular poster at the time and he did have Marans. I was looking into purchasing some hatching eggs and Marans were high on my list. Especially after reading and hearing what BY BOB and Shad had to say about them.
I still had these 4 running around
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Plus Toothless
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Henrietta who was developing into a lovely hen.
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And Momma Hen of course.
I find someone sort of close to me who had Marans and offered hatching eggs. I contacted them to make plans to get the eggs when ole reliable went broody again as I did not have a incubator at the time. I kept a watch on their facebook page and what do you know, they had hatched out about 100 chicks and at 2 weeks old they still had 12 left with more due to hatch in another week. So they decided to have a contest and pick 2 winners to each receive 6 of the remaining chicks. I decided to enter, I mean, it is not like I would win as there were over 100 people enter. Low and behold, I was one of the 2 winners. My Marans were on their way.

This is taking a lot of popcorn!

 

[BY Bob]

It is great! So many wonderful pictures and people who haven't been here for a while returning. So lovely.

It's better than I had ever hoped!

 

[featherhead007]

This thread (and chicken photos) can have that effect on you!

 

[BY Bob]

For what happened. Was for the girls. This pic was clearly pre-fencing days, when they could come up and 'knock' on the door!

While I am sure you DON"T miss "the poops on the stoops", I bet you do kinda miss the 'Somebody's knocking, mum let us in'... 'You've hearddd about us, but you never dreamed....we'd be so sweet and so keen!

Do notice, the word is KEEN, not CLEAN

I miss the back door photos too. I really like them.

 

[BY Bob]

Thanks to everyone for the replies. Now that I'm aware I've watched closer and done some research. I now believe we have two threats. I've become pretty convinced that the bird in the photos is a red tail hawk. I've seen two of them together at lower altitudes and they are definitely big, much larger than a Coopers, and from pictures on the www, their underside markings seem to match those of the red tails. If that weren't bad enough, it looks like we've also got a whole nother set of predators (parents and chicks) living in a tree just a couple of houses away. These are smaller but I still can't identify or get a photo of them. Looks like this may be a long summer, but at least the chicken compound is very safe from aerial attack, and the girls seem pretty content to stay inside. Still, I'm not the least bit happy about this.

Redtails are BIG and are dive attackers meaning they tend to come from up high and sweep down. Other hawks like Cooper's will use your own trees to hunt from. They are different types of threats. As long as your run is covered and they are not running free you should be safe. If you ever let them out you need to be aware of the differences in attack methods so you can best help defend them.

 

[BY Bob]

I definitely don’t miss ‘poops on the stoops’ but I got some great photos when they could access the back door. Here is one of my original girls, Lucy, who was such a mummy’s girl.

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There they are!