Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[BY Bob]

Tax

Foxy, meimei, wendy taking bath
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Inky: our perfect chicken who is showing off her beautiful back.
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Lovely photos.

 

[BY Bob]

First Eggs!

Hi y’all. Hope everyone is doing well. I really need to try to stop in more often. But I definitely had to post today because two of my pullets laid their first eggs! Not sure which two, will have to pay more attention to them the next few days. And they have gotten so big and fluffy!

Here is a pic of them, next to two from my older girls.
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And here are the candidates for laying them.
Can’t see the leg bands very well. I think this is Indigo, Blue, and Henrietta in these two pics.
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Jet
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Henrietta
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1st eggs! Congratulations!

 

[BY Bob]

I don’t think I can aim for completely safe and give them the freedom they love. But I do want to make it harder for predators.
I think their main defense is the abundance of other prey. So I am reassured by the rabbits and mice.
Also the crows who are back, and I am starting to feed.
I don’t sit with them all the time they are out, and it seems my presence made little difference, but as I reflect on it, I think my situation is a lot better than the one on the video.

Yours have a lot more ground cover than the ones in the video.

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Happy Fluffy Butt Friday everyone.
I saved this picture the other days photo shoot. I could have posted it yesterday as well as little Owly is sampling some wild water.

 

[RoyalChick]

Happy Fluffy Butt Friday everyone.
I saved this picture the other days photo shoot. I could have posted it yesterday as well as little Owly is sampling some wild water.
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Adorable little fluffy butt - and a lovely cast iron skillet!!

 

[LhickenChicken]

Fluffy butt Friday
Little fluffy silkie butts BFTP

Hmm let's see.. which others did I have?
Ratty's fluffy booty-- seems like all BFTPs today

And a look at Miss Aurora (not a BFTP)

 

[RoyalChick]

Happy Fluffy Butt Friday
An army of fluffy butts at the Chicken Palace.
Calypso has a very nice fluffy butt. Even Bernie has some fluff. Babs has a stick tangled in her fluff. It isn’t stuck in poop and she didn’t eat it - she went crashing through the undergrowth and emerged a bit tangled up!

 

[notabitail]

Happy Fluffy Butt Friday
An army of fluffy butts at the Chicken Palace.
Calypso has a very nice fluffy butt. Even Bernie has some fluff. Babs has a stick tangled in her fluff. It isn’t stuck in poop and she didn’t eat it - she went crashing through the undergrowth and emerged a bit tangled up!

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No. It's just a convenient new way of carrying sticks.

 

[ChicoryBlue]

@lightm @BY Bob
I’m so behind. 30 pages in one day, how is that possible???

I’m not an expert! I love looking at them though, and ID’ing is fun for me. Try Broad-Winged Hawk. Fits the area too. https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Broad-winged_Hawk/id

The only thing I know about is to look at certain elements showing on the body and what they generally mean. So- yes, the red across-the-breast stripes and the banded tail would send you to Coopers or Sharp-Shinned. But the upper mottled markings look like a juvenile, because mature hawks of those have a more solid grey, slate solid coloring. There’s a “cap” look to the head and nape also, and here the nape is pretty vertical stripes. So then, when you guess immature and check a picture, you see that the breast markings there are completely different, they are vertical brown stripes. It can’t be an immature Sharp or Coopers.

So then I went looking at the “similar species” information, looking for the right combination of banded tail, sideways striped breast, mottled upper markings & striped nape. Also, geographical distribution. From the possibilities there, and without size indications, Broad-Wing fits. This is a big bird, a buteo, not an accipiter. Buteos have big blunt shaped wings, big bodies, they are birds that soar, accipiters have lean bodies, long pointed wings, fast maneuvering agile flyers.

 

[RebeccaBoyd]

Adorable little fluffy butt - and a lovely cast iron skillet!!

Those were a yard sale find. I think 8 in total of different sizes for $10. Had them a few years and they came looking like that. Mom claims every now and again she is going to clean them up and season them but never gets around to it. No need to really, have our Griswold and Lodge skillets we faithfully use. One day though, they will be pretty again.