Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[rural mouse]

What's the plural? Ends in -pus like octopus, for which the plural is octopi. Logically, it should be platypi......but the English language is ANYTHING but logical.View attachment 3995462

https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/the-many-plurals-of-octopus-octopi-octopuses-octopodes

See what I mean?!

 

[rural mouse]

Mugs

When going to let the birds loose

Later the same day

Rose

Mera she's getting in some spectacular color. Come on, girl, finish growing those.

 

[RoyalChick]

I do love living here, so much that I realise I made it sound like we own the place - not so, it belongs to my partner 's family !
It has the typical pros and cons of rural isolated places. The only thing the village has, is a one class for all primary school. Access to a doctor, a store, a bakery, a drugstore is half an hour drive of mountain road, where the emergency paramedics /firefighters are also located.

"You guys don't get straw you're not special enough "


Last year, I noticed that Léa's crop didn't empty for some time while she was molting. She also had strange poops, like she was constipated.
I searched around a bit on BYC and did find many posts where a moulting chicken had a slow crop. Sometimes it would eventually turn to a sour crop and sometimes solve itself on it's own when molting was over.
There was various type of advice given. I didn't do anything for Léa because I was afraid of stressing her out and things resolved by themselves, though she had a difficult transition coming out of the moult and back into lay.

To answer your question I believe that hens are more sensitive to crop issues when they moult.
Maybe not as relevant, I've noticed that the implant has had a drastic effect on Laure's digestion first with horrible diarrhea throughout the moult and now she has perfect beautiful poops like she never did before and like none of my other chickens . So I think hormones play a role on digestion.

Monday mug : may I know why you accuse me of digging in the mud ?
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Thank you @ManueB - I will keep on as planned with some vitamin B, coconut oil and massage, but I can at least hope that it is just molting related.
Poor Bernie - she will find a way to get her revenge on me for all this manhandling I am sure!
While I was up and around in the Chicken Palace with my headlamp I did give Pooh her Brazilian. Hope she doesn’t feel the cold back there!

 

[RoyalChick]

Happy Monday everyone. Here is a series of mugshots from Calypso - she is making it quite clear that in her mind I am just a lowly servant!
I think Calypso is my only hen laying right now. Probably Sylvie is laying too - but as she only lays a couple of times a week at the best of times, it is hard to be sure.
And it struck me that not all sex-links are high production. I think technically Tassels is a sex-link, but I have barely seen an egg from her since Spring. She spends most of her time broody, and now she tells me she is molting (though it is hard to know if she is telling the truth).

 

[Ponypoor]

Need advice
I may make a thread on this in the illnesses forum, but I am guessing this crowd has experience.

I am worried about Bernie.

I think I have posted pictures before of how Bernie can stuff herself to the point you cannot believe she can stand upright with the size of her crop.
This picture is from August, 2023 as an example.

View attachment 3995449

Anyway, her crop really was huge yesterday afternoon when she was torturing the pumpkin, but because she is molting heavily on her body I thought maybe it just looked more prominent without a nice covering of feathers.

She is behaving normally - not acting ill at all.

Anyway, I am a worrier, so I got up at an unholy hour this morning to examine her on the roost and was disturbed to see that her crop had not gone down overnight.

I wasn't prepared with my frozen coconut oil 'pills' so I gave her a vigorous massage which maybe helped a bit but certainly didn't empty her crop.

It feels quite firm but not rock hard - a bit like dough - and I didn't feel any fibrous lumps. Her breath does not smell sour. She delivered a slightly loose poop onto my foot during this procedure - loose but not alarmingly so.

I will prepare coconut oil pills to pop in her beak tonight after dark and will do some night time and early morning massages and will keep sniffing for signs of sour crop.

My question to all of you is whether hens are more susceptible to crop issues when they molt? I wonder if I am worrying too much, or maybe not enough.
I worry that crop issues are usually a sign of other underlying disease and Bernie may actually be seriously ill. I have had one girl who clearly just ate too much long grass - but all my other crop issues have been the start of a decline for some other reason.

Any thoughts or advice?

Remember Petunia this past summer, and her impacted crop, she had the formatted grain breath and all.

5 weeks she was like that; I gathered the equipment to do a crop surgery but had some delays due to my theatre nurse (BIL) not being available.

In the meantime I had drenched (dosed) her a few times with Anti Gaz ( https://www.drugs.com/vet/anti-gaz-emulsion-can.html ) which is used for colic and constipation, it helps to break up impactions.

I was also massaging her crop a couple times a day.

Then on the day we were going to so the surgery, I checked her that morning to do the massage and it was gone! To say I was freaked out would be a simple statement. I imagined I had somehow ruptured the crop and the contents were floating around in there.

But she seemed fine so I just kept an eye on her, and a few days later she went into a heavy moult.

Now a few months later she is looking great and I haven’t seen her crop impacted.

I can only assume that the Anti Gaz did it’s job and helped break up the material stuck there for over 5 weeks.

I would try some Anti Gaz and massage. Also limit her intake.

 

[Ponypoor]

Monday mug : may I know why you accuse me of digging in the mud ?
View attachment 3995467View attachment 3995468

Hahaha busted!

My kiddies were trying to dust bathe in wet dirt. Poor Fluffy was a silkie dirt ball. I noticed she’s cleaned herself up overnight.

 

[Debbie292d]

TY! We do love our Silkies, eh? Do you specialize in any favorite colors?

We've had a variety of standard size breeds over 13 yrs & loved the experience. Now we've attritioned down to an all-Silkies yard cuz they're easiest to handle in our old age plus we love the little buggers. Our local feed store carries only straight run white Silkie chicks so we had to seek out a private breeder who sold DNA-sexed chicks in other than white colors.

Silver Partridge, Buff/Blue Partridge
View attachment 3995360

Blue Silkie, Moorhead Partridge, Dark Partridge w/Gold wing tips/collar
View attachment 3995362

Silver Partridge, Gold/Blue Partridge
View attachment 3995369

Our only standard size hen is an aging Dominique from our previous flock. She's very good w/the littles.
View attachment 3995371

Wow, just gorgeous!

Do you specialize in any favorite colors?

Not specialize, just really getting serious now about it. Up until now it's just put whatever we had in a huge breeding pen, and they do make some pretty ones.

Hubby is remodeling a 2nd Amish garden shed into four breeding pens. I hope to separate them out and do cuckoo, buffs, and paints.

There's this guy I'm not quite sure who to breed with yet. He's a frizzle, but like a split between a cuckoo and a splash. Maybe I should put him with both a black and a white hen?

 

[Ponypoor]

Where where you born Marie?

@Marie2020

Say earth! I have really wanted to say that on a govt application!

 

[featherhead007]

@Marie2020

Say earth! I have really wanted to say that on a govt application!

Some people just lie about everything!!

 

[Debbie292d]

There's a black tailed buff coloration for some breed or other (it's in the kippenjungle genetics calculator)...

Good to know! I'll check it out. I might keep one of those with black anyway, for the folks that don't care about SOP, they just want pretty silkies.