Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Ponypoor]

Thirsty Thursday

Evil Thursday

 

[Ponypoor]

Petra yesterday

Today, out with the gang - seems ok so far….. they all better behave or they will be in serious trouble when I get home.

 

[SimpleJenn]

A very cruel way is 50/50 baking soda and cornbread/cake mix. The soda bubbles up their guts, they cannot burp or fart it out, guts burst. Technically safe for scavengers too.

I personally use mouse pheromone gel on a snap trap if I need to catch mice here.


Tax, thirsty birds drinking from a driveway puddle.

 

[knoturavggrl]

They are all lovely SFH's... one of the few birds I admired but never had an opportune time to try them. We can only have 5 hens/no roo's so trying different breeds is limited for us ...so I'm enjoying yours

Thank you, they have been a joy.

 

[drstratton]

The husks etc fill them up and they starve. Theoretically. It didn’t work for me as far as I can tell. But I’ll try his way for the rats.

I hope it works.

 

[drstratton]

Thx for posting. Will show this to DH if he wants to try this food bait in our trap which has been successful so far. He's been using cheese cubelets &/or packaged creamy cheese-filled cheese crackers as bait. Adding bacon or tallow sounds like a good idea too. Kaput sounds like too long to wait for results IMO plus I wouldn't want a chicken to inadvertently ingest any of a rodent's dangerous Kaput droppings around the yard!

Seems every year there are new critters to eradicate ~ one year it's ants, another crickets, another spiders, another slugs, another wasps, another earwigs, etc... seems this is the year of the rats!

Yes the jiffy mix and bacon grease is what I will try too.

Peanut butter is the best attractant we've found for mice, not sure about rats as I've never had to deal with them before. Maybe add bacon grease to it.

 

[RoyalChick]

Geronimo remains quite intrigued by my work on the jungle gym. She continues to simply fly straight to the higher levels, but of course she does!

She is not quite 14 weeks old and started munching on eggshells.
Surely she is too young to be thinking about starting to lay?
Her face doesn’t look very red to me, so maybe it was just curiosity because she was following me around and I just refilled the pot.
Nobody else is laying except Tassels. Pooh is molting hard, but I am not sure what everyone else’s excuse is!

 

[drstratton]

Bucket traps work VERY well for mice. You're going to need something bigger for rats....like a 30+ gallon trash can. Like Sylvester said, keeping poison away from your ladies (including any dead bodies) is also important. FWIW, if you can find their den area, block all the exits and pack some dry ice into it. That will kill them without poison.

I wasn't planning on using poison, we also have cats. We put water in the buckets, but I was thinking we'd probably need a larger one too. I don't know if there's any place near us with dry ice. Though I can pick some of that up in town. Just curious, how does that kill them?

 

[drstratton]

I had the thin out my tomato pants this year a couple of time! They grew well and put out lots of fruit, but just wouldn’t ripen with the heat

Petra is out with the main gang today
View attachment 4246902
She’s up there in the shadow by that last doorway

That’s her
View attachment 4246903

And now Butterscotch is not well, she’s moulting but this is more than a moult lethargy.
View attachment 4246904

Not sure what the heck is going on with these guys.

I hope she starts to perk up. A hunched up girl or boy is a sure sign they aren't doing well.

 

[drstratton]

ThirstydayView attachment 4246910filling the tire on the spigot....I let it overflow....the "wild" water was more desirable.

It always is!