Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[rural mouse]

New arrivals! 5 Buckeyes. More than I ordered (3) but that's fine, was secretly hoping for extras. All are appearing healthy. One has a strange spot over her eye (see picture). Mostly okay with being held in my hand, these guys are pretty chill relatively, and took drops of warm water from a syringe, then warmed up nicely under the heat plate for a short time. Scooted back out soon enough. Then the nipple waterer wasn't working, so before I figured out it was a bubble airlock I hand-syringed more water to all of them by holding the 1ml syringe like a waterer and slowly pushing the plunger. They took 10 refills before they had enough! They are eating tiny bits of crumbled crumble and doing wing flap calisthenics now with short runs and jumps about the brooder.
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Waterer's working now
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Here below is the little one with the spot. Even from a photo blown up it's hard to tell if this is thin feathering with skin discoloration, or what. At first glance she looked like an Easter egger.
Anyone ever see this kind of thing before?
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Little darlings!

Had a mark like that on one if last year's babies. Feathered out normal. I would have to backtrack through the pics to figure out which bird it was.

 

[Ponypoor]

Ok two for them back to stalls

 

[Sylvester017]

Update: the ice in my ice tray was still frozen not melted into one piece of ice. The freezer is full and there shouldn’t be any issues with the frozen food. PTL

Whenever there's an outage don't open the fridge or freezer to keep the inside insulated. Keeping a freezer comfortably full also helps frozen contents from defrosting if an outage occurs.

 

[Sylvester017]

Good morning everyone.

This is not chicken related but Rosie wanted me to show off her new "babies". She has been wanting to set up a tank for a while. I have drug my feet and refused to let her. Do not get me wrong, I love aquariums, before the chickens I took pride in my fish tanks. I'm still a little salty over the last one I had that Rosie and grandma wrecked. 20 gallon going on 3 years with a established colony of swordtails and mollies. Livebearers are my thing when it comes to fish. Grandma takes Rosie fishing when she is around 4 and they come home and put in a bluegill she had caught. I was at work and come home to this thing having eaten everything in the tank. I was both devastated and angry. "Bluegill" the bluegill grew huge and was the bane of my existence for 5 years. I actively tried to accidentally kill him for the last 3 years as he would eat every tank mate including snails and my pleco. He destroyed any real plants I had. I hated him. He finally met his maker when he got stuck in the castle that was left in the tank. When he was finally gone I noticed the tank was developing a small leak so I just scraped it all and sold the equipment and well, hello chickens.

The last year me and rosie have went back and forth over her wanting fish. I told her I was not sinking money, and time into something for her to go catch another "creek" fish and throw it in. Well she finally came to her senses and came to me wanting livebearers and she found cory cats. She then got my brother on board and he drug out his old 5 gallon he had stored that when he got could go either salt or freshwater. It was clean when he stored it but she spent 3 hours scrubbing it 3 weeks ago. Spent her birthday money buying a new filter, heater, and the start up chemicals. She learned the cycling process from Michael and did all the water tests herself. She also saw just how quickly one can sink a $100 into something and not have a single fish yet.

Sunday it was time, we took her to petco. Seeing how it was a 5 gallon I told her her options were limited. She is my child after all and headed straight to the fancy guppies. They actually for once had females and not just males. She picked out 4 females and 2 males. Well, no, the pretty snakeskin male is mine and I spotted the female that had the snakeskin tail pattern. The other male is orange and she got 2 yellow females and a orange one to go with him. Then she goes off looking for some shrimp for the clean up crew. I head off looking at plants and their other tanks. I spotted my next tank. Why hello you gorgeous 35 gallon cube that I can have so much fun with. I also scoped out and very much approved of their selection of swordtails, mollies and platy's. Oh do I ever have ideas now. Rosie then comes and excitedly drags me to another tank. They were sold out of shrimp but they had cory's. Pygmy cory's at that. They only had 2 left which had to come home with us. They are cute little devils I will admit.

After they were acclimated and released into the tank it is not even a hour later and Rosie drags me into her room. One of her guppies was doing what guppies do. 3 fry already. She ended up dropping 10 that we know of. Now, there is plenty of hiding spaces in the tank and a live plant just for them. I purposefully did not buy a breeder box. I told her the strongest and smartest will survive, we would not try to save everyone of them or she would be overrun in a month. The next day my brother comes home with a fake plant that is like a ball just for them at her request. They have found it and most if not all are happily swimming inside and the adults cannot get to them.

Here are 2 video's I took Sunday. You think taking pictures of chickens is hard, I forgot just how hard it was to take a picture or a video of fish. I think I used to use the nano settings on my camera I just do not remember which ones I used. It will for sure be about 2 weeks before I even attempt to take a video or picture of the fry, they are tiny. I also admit after a few days I like the cory's. Rosie may be onto something there and now when I set up the big tank I want a school of 5 or more of them.

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tax
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The live fish births are great to watch & all the teeny babies! I had fancy guppies, zebras, & neons together & they did great. But the single water snail kept having babies...must've been self-sexing

I had fancy goldfish separately. Much larger & more interesting to watch cuz of the beautiful varieties & flowing tails & fins.

But I'll take chickens today

 

[RoyalChick]

Mr.Rat
I have a rat in the Chicken Palace. He has been there a while and appears to be solitary.
I have been watching him on cameras to try and identify how he gets in.
I have found his burrows inside the Chicken Palace. Curiously he seems to prefer tunneling from one part of the Palace to another when he could easily just walk.
But I cannot find any burrows outside.
I have been trying to capture the moment he enters to give me a clue. But so far no luck.
I have no idea what kind of rat he is but he is quite cute and has a white tip to his tail which is rather dashing.
Anyway, as he has gotten bolder - running around even when the Princesses are still up and about, I have started to worry about him nibbling on their toes or eating a chick if I ever get some for Tassels.
So with heavy heart I decided that today was the day I would dispose of him even though I haven’t yet figured out his entrance tunnel.
So I blocked off the down hill burrows I had found inside the run and poured 10lb of dry ice down the burrow where I see him disappearing just before dawn each morning.
I don’t believe all that CO2 even gave him a headache. Here he is checking things out in the cool of the evening after. He looks puzzled about the burrows I blocked off but no doubt he will reopen them during the night.
I will admit I wasn’t all sad that he survived!

I will continue to use cameras to try and figure out how he gets in.
I was thinking I might get one of those colored smoke bombs they use at gender reveal parties to see if I can find his burrow outside the Chicken Palace.
Anyone else got any ideas?

Rat tax: Piglet has discovered the heap of wood chips I piled up to try and smother the poison ivy that has been growing up through my bench.

 

[BY Bob]

Full Sail

In my experience, normally leghorn type chickens usually hold their tails very narrow, no more than a couple of feathers wide, like Aster in this photo.

On rare occasions you will catch them doing "Full Sail" and spreading their tail feathers out, like Daisy, the greatest hen ever, in this photo.

Sadly that photo was very late in the year before her molt so those tail feathers are pretty tattered and worn.

That is why it was a special moment yesterday when Aster was feeling it and decided to go Full Sail. What a beauty!

 

[BY Bob]

Good morning everyone.

This is not chicken related but Rosie wanted me to show off her new "babies". She has been wanting to set up a tank for a while. I have drug my feet and refused to let her. Do not get me wrong, I love aquariums, before the chickens I took pride in my fish tanks. I'm still a little salty over the last one I had that Rosie and grandma wrecked. 20 gallon going on 3 years with a established colony of swordtails and mollies. Livebearers are my thing when it comes to fish. Grandma takes Rosie fishing when she is around 4 and they come home and put in a bluegill she had caught. I was at work and come home to this thing having eaten everything in the tank. I was both devastated and angry. "Bluegill" the bluegill grew huge and was the bane of my existence for 5 years. I actively tried to accidentally kill him for the last 3 years as he would eat every tank mate including snails and my pleco. He destroyed any real plants I had. I hated him. He finally met his maker when he got stuck in the castle that was left in the tank. When he was finally gone I noticed the tank was developing a small leak so I just scraped it all and sold the equipment and well, hello chickens.

The last year me and rosie have went back and forth over her wanting fish. I told her I was not sinking money, and time into something for her to go catch another "creek" fish and throw it in. Well she finally came to her senses and came to me wanting livebearers and she found cory cats. She then got my brother on board and he drug out his old 5 gallon he had stored that when he got could go either salt or freshwater. It was clean when he stored it but she spent 3 hours scrubbing it 3 weeks ago. Spent her birthday money buying a new filter, heater, and the start up chemicals. She learned the cycling process from Michael and did all the water tests herself. She also saw just how quickly one can sink a $100 into something and not have a single fish yet.

Sunday it was time, we took her to petco. Seeing how it was a 5 gallon I told her her options were limited. She is my child after all and headed straight to the fancy guppies. They actually for once had females and not just males. She picked out 4 females and 2 males. Well, no, the pretty snakeskin male is mine and I spotted the female that had the snakeskin tail pattern. The other male is orange and she got 2 yellow females and a orange one to go with him. Then she goes off looking for some shrimp for the clean up crew. I head off looking at plants and their other tanks. I spotted my next tank. Why hello you gorgeous 35 gallon cube that I can have so much fun with. I also scoped out and very much approved of their selection of swordtails, mollies and platy's. Oh do I ever have ideas now. Rosie then comes and excitedly drags me to another tank. They were sold out of shrimp but they had cory's. Pygmy cory's at that. They only had 2 left which had to come home with us. They are cute little devils I will admit.

After they were acclimated and released into the tank it is not even a hour later and Rosie drags me into her room. One of her guppies was doing what guppies do. 3 fry already. She ended up dropping 10 that we know of. Now, there is plenty of hiding spaces in the tank and a live plant just for them. I purposefully did not buy a breeder box. I told her the strongest and smartest will survive, we would not try to save everyone of them or she would be overrun in a month. The next day my brother comes home with a fake plant that is like a ball just for them at her request. They have found it and most if not all are happily swimming inside and the adults cannot get to them.

Here are 2 video's I took Sunday. You think taking pictures of chickens is hard, I forgot just how hard it was to take a picture or a video of fish. I think I used to use the nano settings on my camera I just do not remember which ones I used. It will for sure be about 2 weeks before I even attempt to take a video or picture of the fry, they are tiny. I also admit after a few days I like the cory's. Rosie may be onto something there and now when I set up the big tank I want a school of 5 or more of them.

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tax
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I love a fish tank. They are very cute!

Eve got a fish tank last fall when she won a goldfish at the fair.

 

[BY Bob]

So, when you rely on your daughter and your dad to gather eggs because it is well after dark when you get home, things get missed.
Don't get me wrong they are great at putting everyone up at night for me, they have been gathering eggs, even the silkie eggs. They are just neglectful to mention that neither one will tangle with a bitey broody hen. We also have to clear up their definition of "we got ALL the eggs." No, ALL the eggs includes those under said broody girl. I noticed Goose was broody, but, hello, they are getting the eggs so it was no big deal. About a week ago dad causally said, "so you are going to let her hatch I see." Hatch, hatch what?

Goose has a secret.
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Really dad and Rose, you two knew about this? You also waited at least a week to tell me.
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To make matters worse, in the last week Gryffyn got the message that incubation was being allowed. Now she has joined Goose on incubation duties.
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It was too late when I found them, chicks are coming, probably in less then a week now. I almost tossed them, but I brought out a flashlight to candle them and saw dancing at least 8 days or older embryo's in eggs. I could not do it, I could not toss them in the creek after seeing that.

Congratulations! More babies!

 

[notabitail]

Full Sail

In my experience, normally leghorn type chickens usually hold their tails very narrow, no more than a couple of feathers wide, like Aster in this photo.

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On rare occasions you will catch them doing "Full Sail" and spreading their tail feathers out, like Daisy, the greatest hen ever, in this photo.

View attachment 4140293

Sadly that photo was very late in the year before her molt so those tail feathers are pretty tattered and worn.

That is why it was a special moment yesterday when Aster was feeling it and decided to go Full Sail. What a beauty!

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Josey does it while sitting and it's pretty. She can pull it off better than the Cream Legbars.

 

[Ponypoor]

Mr.Rat
I have a rat in the Chicken Palace. He has been there a while and appears to be solitary.
I have been watching him on cameras to try and identify how he gets in.
I have found his burrows inside the Chicken Palace. Curiously he seems to prefer tunneling from one part of the Palace to another when he could easily just walk.
But I cannot find any burrows outside.
I have been trying to capture the moment he enters to give me a clue. But so far no luck.
I have no idea what kind of rat he is but he is quite cute and has a white tip to his tail which is rather dashing.
Anyway, as he has gotten bolder - running around even when the Princesses are still up and about, I have started to worry about him nibbling on their toes or eating a chick if I ever get some for Tassels.
So with heavy heart I decided that today was the day I would dispose of him even though I haven’t yet figured out his entrance tunnel.
So I blocked off the down hill burrows I had found inside the run and poured 10lb of dry ice down the burrow where I see him disappearing just before dawn each morning.
I don’t believe all that CO2 even gave him a headache. Here he is checking things out in the cool of the evening after. He looks puzzled about the burrows I blocked off but no doubt he will reopen them during the night.
I will admit I wasn’t all sad that he survived!
View attachment 4140232

I will continue to use cameras to try and figure out how he gets in.
I was thinking I might get one of those colored smoke bombs they use at gender reveal parties to see if I can find his burrow outside the Chicken Palace.
Anyone else got any ideas?

Rat tax: Piglet has discovered the heap of wood chips I piled up to try and smother the poison ivy that has been growing up through my bench.
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Standard Norway Rat, they abound here in NA.

I would set one of those black plastic snap traps just in front of one of his tunnels he uses. Block off as many as you can find to ‘encourage it’ to only use the tunnel you put the trap at.

You need to get rid of him fast before more move in. They carry disease, chew on power wires, chew on wood and structures. And yes could possibly kill a chick. Though I would be more worried about carrying disease.

I too have seen them on my barn cams, but not lately, I have wondered if the chooks have been hunting them.