Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[RoyalChick]

My most loyal egg customer picked up her eggs this morning and she shared heart breaking news. 3 times now she has bought eggs to hatch or chicks from me. She was slowly rebuilding her aging flock of hens. Prior to hatching chicks off me she had never kept a rooster, had evil ones as she called them. Well, you know my hatch ratio with boys, she ended up with a 25% percent of boys from chicks hatched. She also hatched out one of the first white fluffy feet Butter chicks. Instant love with that chick and it wormed it's way into her heart before it crowed at 5 weeks old. She placed some of her boys but kept that one and 3 more she was trying to pick a keeper out of from her late fall hatch last year. The white one was dubbed Moose as he grew huge but was her favorite chicken. Would come daily to sit on her porch swing with her. Tragedy struck 4 days ago as Moose and 3 young hens were killed. Her neighbors trail camera revealed the culprit. Huge raccoon. She is waging war on a coon that is too big to fit into her live animal trap. Her neighbor spent the weekend adding rat wire along all the sides and top of a coop made out of wood and metal. He is going to install electric fencing for her around the run and has promised her he will not stop until the coon is eliminated.

She shared these pictures with me of the boys she has left. They will not replace Moose but she has decided to hang onto all 3 now.
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Sad. Really hate those guys.
What is rat wire?

 

[Marie2020]

On my to do list is to mix up some sand with wood ash from the fireplace and some dirt and give it to my Princesses to have some fun with.
I just use general building sand which is very cheap but comes in 50lb bags which is way more than I think I need.

Sand tax - guess who spotted a field vole!
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What sand do you use? They hated the play sand . I purchased parrot cage sand this time with crushed oyster shell

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Sad. Really hate those guys.
What is rat wire?

What we call the heavy duty 1/4 inch hardwire.

 

[Pastel the Rooster]

On my to do list is to mix up some sand with wood ash from the fireplace and some dirt and give it to my Princesses to have some fun with.
I just use general building sand which is very cheap but comes in 50lb bags which is way more than I think I need.

Sand tax - guess who spotted a field vole!
View attachment 3549637

Is one of those a cream legbar?

 

[Pastel the Rooster]

It won't let me post pictures.... I've tried clicking the button but it won't work...
I have pictures of BBQ's foot though.

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

There is something off with this picture.

Ok my eagle eyed friends. Tell me what you see.

 

[RoyalChick]

What sand do you use? They hated the play sand . I purchased parrot cage sand this time with crushed oyster shell

Just regular sand from a builder’s merchant. The kind they use to mix with cement to make concrete.
Here we call it ‘coarse washed all-purpose sand’. It costs about $6 for 50lb.
I think play sand is too fine for the chickens and somewhere I read it is made of something that isn’t ideal for chickens but I can’t remember the details.
I have never had parrots so I don’t know what sand they use, and I am not sure why they add oyster shell. Is the idea that they eat the oyster shell? That might be good!
I looked on the Jewson website (the only building supply place I know in the UK) and they call it ‘sharp concreting sand’ or ‘grit sand’ (£5.34 for a ‘handy bag’ of unspecified size). They also have something called ‘building sand’ but that is for bricklaying and looks too fine.

 

[featherhead007]

Sad. Really hate those guys.
What is rat wire?

Isn’t ratwire a type of big dog?

 

[RoyalChick]

Is one of those a cream legbar?

Yes. The first one is a Crested Cream Legbar.

 

[RoyalChick]

Isn’t ratwire a type of big dog?

where is the eye roll emoji when you need it?