Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[RoyalChick]

Hello everyone, I've been on very sporadically, trying to keep up with everyone. The Weekly Synopsis has been great, thank you so much to the scribes!
All is well here. Got some photos -

A few days ago Hazel (left) giving Butters a lesson in not being uppity. Hazel sternly faced her down till she relented. Butters needs regular reminding! In a way, I feel bad for her, it's either her position in the tribe (#3) or her personality, but she gets in little scraps with Hazel (#2) and Popcorn (#4, bottom) pretty frequently.
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Peanut sunbathing in the little trench of the drip line of the garage barn. It didn't look like a relaxing experience, but extremely satisfying. In human terms it looked more like a yoga or Pilates position than what we would do while taking in the sun! Foot firmly dug into the grass. Wing held out. Body pressed hard against the warm ground. Ahhhh...
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Even yesterday and today, when it was 78F in the shade, while I was all concerned about their heat tolerance and went around putting more shade cloth up, the group really wanted to dust bathe and sunbathe out in the sun instead. Well it was slightly shady over there. That's toward where their summer run will be.

The Big Run with some shade, nobody cared.
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Where they all wanted to be, all happily bathing and softly bokking and baking in the heat. I didn't want to get close as that would have disturbed them.
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Two fluffy butts this evening, Peanut (right) and Hazel. Of course Hazel's the one keeping an eye on me...
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Lovely pics. That first one is wall worthy. I think you should submit it to POW and caption competition.

 

[micstrachan]

Is that dilated? I think this is her normal look.

How about this picture?
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Sorry, I meant constricted, which is the opposite of dilated. She’s such a pretty girl!

 

[lightm]

If you notice, after the reduced rate, there were no deaths in 2 of the groups. Maybe someone can rustle up a more recent study...but, unfortunately, it isn't in their interest of huge commercial operations, as they want as much production as possible, so there probably are very few people/institutions willing to fund such studies.

something that does help some is to reduce the amount of light they get. Are you able to let them out later (and if there is a window in their coop, cover it?) so that they have less day light per day? I've read 14 hours is key, but my girls started increasing production/coming back online at around 12 hours - but I truly believe that part of it is that the daylight is going in the right direction AND their breeding - to lay eggs more continuously.

That said, you have to do what you think is correct, and with what limited info we have.

Where do they say there were no more deaths in 2 of the groups after reduced rate? I only find "reduced mortality".

After reading it more, I see that the progestin treatment is 100mg of MPA for every 3-4 weeks. This had bad adversarial effect, so they reduced it to 20mg, which then did nothing. It was stabilized to 50mg after 8 month.

All leghorns were 1 year old at the beginning of the experiment. The experiment lasted 16 months.

 

[Marie2020]

Caturday

Pusscat keeping watch on the girls

 

[Marie2020]

The girls having a real adventure

 

[Marie2020]

I am so sorry about Tina's soft egg. That is always a worry with ex-batts or production birds. My Wendy and Poopy are doing soft eggs. :-(

She laid the perfect egg yesterday with a hard shell. @Ponypoor brought us luck

 

[Marie2020]

What's in there

 

[Marie2020]

 

[Ponypoor]

Caturday

Pusscat keeping watch on the girls
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Morning Marie, morning lovely moggy

 

[Ponypoor]

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The girls having a real adventure

Oooo dandelions I can’t wait till they grow here