Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Kris5902]

Oh I don’t know, Arduinna seems to fit in DH’s lap ok!

Mr Jimmy Pickletoes is well over 150lbs… I think he’s closer to 200 TBH…

For size reference… his head barely fits on my lap!

 

[Kris5902]

It is sold for plant food I think. Or is that fish meal? Or maybe both.

Slightly different processing, I’m basically talking about a lump of meat, fat, and bones, fresh

 

[micstrachan]

Look at you! Great job helping someone out like that.

Sadly, the sweet little girl didn’t make it. I think she was too far gone when we intervened, plus, we should have administered fluids. She was severely emaciated in my opinion. They sent her to UC Davis for necropsy, so maybe they’ll learn something. They rescued her off the street, figuring someone gad dumped her as coyote bait.

 

[micstrachan]

It is with great sadness that I announce the peaceful passing of my beloved Daisy. I had no warning as honestly she has had a great month in truth. Today I saw her dust bathing, bullying her way to more then her fair share of dried cherries and picking on Twiggy. I went out at dark to make sure everyone was roosted and do a final egg check when I found Bubba snuggled up beside her. She was still warm so she could not have been gone long as I had went out back to dump out some leftovers a hour prior and she was scratching around. I have her body wrapped up and in a box and will bury her in the morning. I will admit to feeling angry and cheated that she was only 2 1/2 years old and not a high production breed, yet I've lost her to presumed tumor in her reproductive tract.
Rest in peace my sweet girl. I hope where you are now there endless minnows and young snakes for you to eat.
View attachment 3287483

Awww… I’m so sorry to hear this. Rest in peace, sweet Daisy.

The chicken I tried to help who died last night was Daisy, too.

 

[Kris5902]

Do you thinks This would be any good?. I don't use a collar on him but will get one for temporary use if the other Cone is better

Depending on how your cat reacts, is the most important thing I tried a soft cone with Bullet and that didn’t work at all (she was scratching her chin aggressively and it became infected) I ended up needing a hard plastic one but that was a slightly different issue than what you seem to be having.

 

[DaisyBuff]

I don’t have any chicken snakes, but I do have chicken commuters! View attachment 3288329

 

[micstrachan]

Ignoring the 10% rule
In spite of @BY Bob’s helpful visualization of the ‘only 10% treats’ rule I decided that getting any calories into Maggie was more important than ‘healthy eating’.
So I brought out the big guns.
Corn on the cob. As you can see, Maggie is obsessed with it.
I recorded it in SloMo but YouTube won’t show it in SloMo which is a real shame as on the original SloMo video there is some great swinging wattle action!

Edited to add. I figured out SloMo. Watch this instead.

Yay, Maggie! I’m glad she’s getting some calories!

 

[micstrachan]

I don’t have any chicken snakes, but I do have chicken commuters! View attachment 3288329

OMG, this is awesome!

 

[DaisyBuff]

Mr Jimmy Pickletoes is well over 150lbs… I think he’s closer to 200 TBH… View attachment 3288440
For size reference… his head barely fits on my lap!

Wow, this goat is likely a lot heavier than me! I've raised miniature goats before. They never got that big of course, but they are adorable. I had a white one with Brown spots named Isabelle. They may be small, but they are amazing jumpers and climbers! I had to renovate her pen about 4 times so she couldn't climb her way out lol.

 

[Kris5902]

90/10 Rule

I have just responded to the Cracked Corn article today. They quote the 90/10 rule when providing treats to chickens. I thought that perhaps a visualization of what that means might be useful.

Here is a bit of a copy of what I posted.

Chicken feed rates are most commonly expressed in studies as weight or mass not volume. Most of these studies were done to measure the delivery of antibiotics in feed. Despite that they do give a starting point to determine how much your chicken eats per day.

If we use a study done by B.B. Buck in 1985 they categorized feed consumption as a % of body weight.

So if we look at a 3.5 lb chicken, say a Polish or a Leghorn hen, they consumed 6.7% of their weight by day in feed. Let's convert lbs to ounces in order to make determining 10% easier. 3.5 lbs × 16 = 56 oz x 6.7% = 3.752 ounces of feed per day. That is about 3/4 of a cup.

View attachment 3283917

10% of that would be 0.3752 oz of corn or no more than a palm-full per day.

View attachment 3283918

Let's look at a bigger chicken, your typical layer. Not a dual purpose bird like an orpington, just a standard hen say around 5 lbs. In the study, a 5.5 lb chicken consumed 5.0% of their body weight. 5.5 lbs × 16 = 88 oz x 5.0% = 4.4 oz feed per day. That is approaching a cup of feed.

View attachment 3283920

10% of that is 0.44 oz of corn or again, no more than a palm-full per day.

View attachment 3283918

As you can see despite increasing the size of the chicken, it is still about a palm-full of corn per day.

View attachment 3283919

And then you have some people here, who literally are feeding only scratch and a handful of pellets. The exact opposite of your example and there are three separate people doing this…