Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Ponypoor]

Broody butt from above
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Broody bum in the bath
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Broody in a box x2
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Is that 2 broody hens? Love how they dust bathe when broody, all grumbly but enjoying themselves.

 

[TX Chick Noob]

Hi Marie.
There is my favorite grumpy chicken. I swear she looks how I feel today. The last several days I have had to fix every meal for grandma. She has supervised and side-seat cooked every second of it. Today she got it in her head she was fixing soup. I may have managed to save it before it scorched. Walk in to see the soup boiling away to nothing and her sitting there beside the stove embroidering away. I just shook my head when she was on the phone claiming she was cooking dinner a few minutes ago.

Are you still looking for a facility for her? Or is that a different person? (Sorry if I am confused.)

Sure hope you are ok, crazy weather this year.

Do you have a ‘evacuation plan’ for you animals? I find this very interesting to hear about persons plan for emergencies like forest fire, tornadoes, snow storms etc.

We have a plan for the cats. And for a major evacuation maybe the chickens. The llama would require us having a second vehicle that can pull a trailer which isn’t possible right now.

I haven't heard of these before......going to have to check into them. Getting the flies like that would be great too!

I have this one:

They are usually available cheaper at Sam’s Club and Costco and include extra replacement bulbs there.

@GregnLety
Same here for the forecast so ya definitely have my sympathy. Rogers is just east of Waco correct?
East of Belton/Temple, a little south of Waco.

@bgmathteach
Oh, do be careful! Lots of water and ice for you and the chooks, and hopefully you have some AC for you & a fan for them - that is down-right miserable/heat stroke weather!
Worst part is the high humidity/heat index has us topping out at a “feels like” temperature of around 115 or higher on some of those days. Bad enough that we are getting Excessive heat warnings.

 

[Ponypoor]

Well, it’s not a good day here, it’s not all guns and roses this morning. The drunk neighbor down the alley is roaming around aimlessly. I have no idea what he’s up to, but I need to watch my chooks closely just in case of mischief.

Can the police help? What about social services? It’s sad he is inebriated and wandering around but it is dangerous for you and him.

 

[Pastel the Rooster]

Oh no, Eli ended up dying? That sucks.
I send you a bunch of hugs

I am just missing Eli. She rounded them all up when she wanted to go in. I never really noticed how important that was to me being able to close up for the night.
Now they are running wild without parental oversight!

 

[featherhead007]

Can the police help? What about social services? It’s sad he is inebriated and wandering around but it is dangerous for you and him.

I’m in authority here. I walked him back to his house down the alley, and gave him a berry power-ade drink. I don’t want anyone to get into trouble or hurt. I left him with a stiff warning that if I see him out of his house again while he’s drunk, he will go sleep in the jail tonight.

 

[featherhead007]

This one is counting license plates IN AUSTRALIA!

 

[Pastel the Rooster]

A farewell to Eli: The little chicken who lived large

I am mourning the loss of my little Eli. She was only with me for a very short time, but she burrowed deep into my heart with her quirky ways.
She never showed any respect for the forces of gravity, and was always on the move, so I do not wish for her to 'rest in peace', but rather to fly to the limits of the sky.

Eli was all about food
I loved Eli and Eli loved food.
In her first few days with me she demonstrated her willingness to embrace the unconventional in order to achieve her goals: sunflower seeds were her drug of choice and there was nothing she would not do to get her beak on some.
Here she is on her first day with me tunneling under her sister Babs to reach the seeds without getting too close to me.

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Later she would burrow under my thick winter jacket to reach the seeds I kept in an inside pocket.

Let's face it, food was the way to Eli's heart!

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She was bottom of the pecking order but she was so fast and so fearless that she always got the lion share of what was on offer.

Eli was a troublemaker
She was full of mischief. You can see it in her cheeky little face.

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She led expeditions to tunnel under the fencing designed to protect the shrubs (useful fact: 3 chickens can dig up a year old, 3' shrub in under 3 hours).

And of course the first thing she did in any circumstance was go up. Here she is testing out the rafters on her first day post quarantine. Those are human sized doors and the floor is steeply sloped. She is a long way up!

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She led her sister into roosting in the rafters going up to about 11' seemingly without much effort.

Eli was a beauty queen
I have a thing for black chickens. Eli took that to a new level because she was black but with flecks of gold. Sometimes she wore green (to match her green snakeskin boots), and sometimes she wore purple, and many days she wore both. I could look at her for hours.

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Eli went broody
At the end of May she suffered some kind of neurological event - maybe even a fit - and she fell off the roost (fortunately not the rafters). Immediately afterwards she took to her nest box and became full on broody.
Every day I carried her out of her nest and she chowed down on the sunflower seeds in my hand while I took her outside for some personal care time. She flared her tail and hackles at anyone in the vicinity. Who knew such a small chicken could make herself so big? She was magnificent - like an ancient battleship in full sail!

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When her eggs didn't hatch (there weren't any eggs under her) she finally emerged but she had one more thing to do.

Eli was an Aunty
Although her eggs didn't hatch, Eli adopted the five chicks I had brought in while she was broody. They were already a month old when she first encountered them but she immediately responded to their little peeps. And maybe even more amazingly they seemed to accept her as their mother.

They were always together. She called them to her and they came. She showed them the good places to dig. They were always talking to each other so I am sure she imparted lots of chicken secrets to them. I hope so.

Here she is showing Sylvie how the worms gather in that little patch because it is usually damp.

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I know it is fanciful, but in retrospect it is hard not to believe that she knew she was dying and wanted to bring a clutch of babies into the world before she left it.

Eli's last day
Eli's last full day with us was on Sunday June 11, 2023. She sat quietly in a sheltered part of the Chicken Palace. She seemed calm and content. She was alert but napped from time to time.
I sat on a tree stump right near her so she would know I was there but not stress about me reaching for her.
Together we watched the other chickens running around and digging in the shrubs. I got lots of pictures.
Bernie stopped by and I was on high alert. Bernie was never vicious to Eli, but Bernie is a big chicken and Eli was quite small and even a well intentioned nip from Bernie can be painful. But Bernie stopped and groomed Eli's head, cleared some bits of bedding dust off her and then moved on.
Babs came by a couple of times and groomed Eli and preened herself and sat for a while.
Her brood of almost grown 'chicks' came and visited often. They are high energy and I was worried they were disturbing her - but she seemed happy to have them around her.
Here is the last picture I took of Eli - it was taken on Sunday evening just before dark. Her kids are settling in around her a bit puzzled why she is not in her usual spot.

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Also fanciful but I feel very sure that the chickens knew this was Eli's last day and they were coming to say goodbye.

Just at dark I shooed the little ones into the hen house and gently carried Eli in as well.
At 4am Babs triggered the coop cameras by coming down off the roost to visit Eli.
Eli was still alive.
An hour or so later Babs triggered the camera again coming to check on Eli, but Eli was gone.

***
It has been an emotional couple of days for me with feelings of guilt and loss, but also of awe at how these wonderful creatures behaved to her at the end.
Mostly now I am just so happy that Eli got to experience what I am sure she believed was motherhood and I hope she has passed on a lot of wisdom to the next generation.
I feel reasonably confident she didn't teach them to roost in the rafters as they never witnessed that directly, but as I am not fluent in Chicken, who knows what she might have told them!

Farewell Eli. Fly to new heights. Know you were much loved and that we all miss you.

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What a wonderful tribute to a wonderful lady ❤ Fly high Eli, and make sure to roost in rafters in your new coop in Heaven, not perches.

So sorry for your loss, RC.
Sending lots of love and hugs

 

[Pastel the Rooster]

What a wonderful tribute to a wonderful lady ❤ Fly high Eli, and make sure to roost in rafters in your new coop in Heaven, not perches.

So sorry for your loss, RC.
Sending lots of love and hugs

Sorry that I saw the post about her so late

 

[Pastel the Rooster]

I'm about to go say hi to my chooks and let the guineas out I'll see if I can get some pictures of Willow.
Also, Bolt has been attacking my mom and I, pecking us, and jumping on our snake boots. Could she be trying to get us out so Willow could have privacy, or is she just being a butt?

 

[BY Bob]

That might be a good thing for chicks, though! - that it is shallow. Let me know what you think of it (after using it for a while). i.e. how sturdy are the legs? do they collapse? is the 2+ inches enough to keep the dirt out? etc.
Thank you!

Exactly. I decided to field test it on the deck. I need to move it to the dirt. In one way it is convenient because it holds a gallon and most water based needs are mixed by the gallon. The other waterers at TSC are over a gallon and require measurements. I will keep you posted.