Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[SimpleJenn]

Delft left her nest twice today, both times for a Leghorn to lay. Those girls are way too pushy for being such young pullets...
6/6 eggs showed some signs of development. I will candle again in a week or so. Hopefully Delft isn't too low in the pecking order to raise chicks...

 

[Ponypoor]

How do you make sure there’s no quartz dust in play sand? Just feeling paranoid here, sorry!

Well it hasn’t killed mine off yet!

If it were me, I would call up a quarry or construction put and see what sort of sand they have on hand. You can probably get them to sell you a 1/2 load to fit a regular pickup. Unless you have a 3/4 or 1 tonne pickup. In that gas get a full load. Um unless you have a short box in which case don’t do that!

But a quarry will be able to let you know where they source their materials, and it’s likely they use river sand. I would not worry about having quartz, I have never heard of it being hazardous.

We had a bunch of guys who pitched a fit about dust on site and whines about silicosis- we had an industrial hygienist come out to do testing, he laughed at them and told them their was silica everywhere and you couldn’t get away from it. And it wouldn’t hurt them. There wasn’t enough to cause harm.

Now if your sand blasting with abrasive grit which contains lots of silica then YES there is a huge hazard! And that is why they were hazmat coveralls and special full face masks and goggles when blasting. And why they have a perimeter set up were people can’t go.

But regular sandy soils are not a hazard.

So whichever type of sand you get they will be fine. Shavings though I would stay away from that is dusty!

 

[janiedoe]

View attachment 4214022
Delft left her nest twice today, both times for a Leghorn to lay. Those girls are way too pushy for being such young pullets...
6/6 eggs showed some signs of development. I will candle again in a week or so. Hopefully Delft isn't too low in the pecking order to raise chicks...

I've had several low pecking order hens that hatched chicks. They all seem to turn into witches when they have babies to protect.
I hope Delft will be fine.

 

[Ponypoor]

View attachment 4214022
Delft left her nest twice today, both times for a Leghorn to lay. Those girls are way too pushy for being such young pullets...
6/6 eggs showed some signs of development. I will candle again in a week or so. Hopefully Delft isn't too low in the pecking order to raise chicks...

I keep my mamas separate from the herd so no one pesters them.

Once babies are a week old though they are out and about with everyone.

Whiskers has her wee ones going everywhere! And that white chick is an eggcellent forager! She finds all sort of big juicy worms, caterpillars and bugs to eat! Yummy hahaha.

No one bothers them, though Dorothy is quite happy to hang out with Whiskers and the babies, helping wth feeding! I hope she doesn’t go broody

Maybe you can put up a barricade to stop the others from bugging her?

 

[featherhead007]

I had to bring in Mr Wyandottey. He is a bit Randy at the moment. He jumped on Bobo when she was taking a nice dust bath. Wow was she angry. I don’t blame her!

 

[BY Bob]

2+ for Tuesday

 

[featherhead007]

Seven o’clock in the evening.. a new all time high for my chooks going to bed. Last one in was Giz. Now time for myself. Some chamomile tea and the book Ive been reading. Good night lovely people.

 

[rural mouse]

I just found out some very sad news.

If you had livestock, especially horses, the best hay supplier in my area was a older gentleman named Riley. He has sold hay and feed for 50+ years. We have always used him. He is also my Kalmbach supplier for my chicken feed. He passed away yesterday. I'm going to miss that old man. Even though his sons had taken over most of the family business, he was still a very prominent fixture as everything was sold in a huge garage right outside his house. No matter the time of day you stopped by he would come outside with the pot of coffee in hand and expect you to sit around a few minutes and chat. Even if I needed just 1 bag of chicken feed, I was always there for a good 30 minutes. I really owe some of my knowledge about chickens to him. Thanks to him I switched to Kalmbach when I was complaining about no matter what I tried they wasted a bit of their feed. The man also knew cattle and horses and he definitely knew his hay. He did a lot of his own hay cutting but also sourced some from Ohio and Pennsylvania. I've lost track of the times he has called to tell dad he was cutting hay in 2 days time and it was perfect for horses meet him at the field at such and such time, or that he was bringing in a load from Ohio.

Rest easy old man. I will treasure the memories of those cups of coffee I did not "need" and the stories that came with them.

definitely a treasure!

 

[rural mouse]

2+ for Tuesday

View attachment 4214033

I see nice red wattles. Good chance of an egg or 2 before winter...

 

[rural mouse]

Good bye sweetlings

you boys keep on doing look out duty (saw it today)

just said goodbye to FIL, headed home with his crew.