Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[rural mouse]

They have the orange table outside that Piglet uses often for water so I could bring that into the run area.
View attachment 4259378

Good idea. It's already familiar, so she's more likely to use it.

 

[Sylvester017]

This is my bestie dog Jack waiting for me to stop messing with the chickens. He's at his boundary. He would probably kill a chicken given the opportunity, given he's a bird dog.

Just about any unsupervised dog breed will play-kill birds... not just "bird dogs". Bird dog trained breeds are used by hunters for their soft mouth when retrieving killed birds. Not like a Pit or Bullie that clamps tight-jawed ruining a hunter's pheasant catch.

Your Jack seems to behave properly under your supervision. I would venture to say a "hound breed" would be harder to control as they are bred for "chasing" prey rather than soft-mouth bird retrieval.

My DD's Golden Retriever has a much softer mouth action than her Pit mix. Both are trained, well behaved, but the Golden is an all-around real marshmallow sweetie. She smiles a lot too

 

[kattabelly]

Just about any unsupervised dog breed will play-kill birds... not just "bird dogs". Bird dog trained breeds are used by hunters for their soft mouth when retrieving killed birds. Not like a Pit or Bullie that clamps tight-jawed ruining a hunter's pheasant catch.

I used to have a Staffordshire bull terrier cross - looked like there was a bit of sighthound in him too - who would sometimes catch pigeons and always released them unharmed when they didn't want to play

He was the most rubbish terrier ever, he saw rats and mice as something closer to pets than prey If a mouse got into his food bowl he'd just sit there making sad, starving puppy-dog eyes until I chased it away.

 

[kattabelly]

Monday mugs / derpy dog tax

 

[Sylvester017]

I used to have a Staffordshire bull terrier cross - looked like there was a bit of sighthound in him too - who would sometimes catch pigeons and always released them unharmed when they didn't want to play

He was the most rubbish terrier ever, he saw rats and mice as something closer to pets than prey If a mouse got into his food bowl he'd just sit there making sad, starving puppy-dog eyes until I chased it away.

As in all specialty breeds some are naturals while others need training to bring out their best breed instincts.

I had a little-known breed called an Olde Boston Bulldogge (like Helen Keller's) but modern breeders started going for flatter misshapen faces so I never got another.

Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan, & dog "Phiz"

My dog c. 1956

We later opted for highly trainable working Rottweilers & had 3 over the years but they are way too powerful for me to train/handle in my old age now. Great at herding cattle, sheep, goats, or horses... but too large/energetic for poultry flocks ~ & heavy dog breeds usually don't live much past 10 yrs. My neighbor's little Chihuahua mix is 15 yrs old, blind, loves guided walks, but still very healthy otherwise!

A couple of our Rotties c. 1990's

 

[Pastel the Rooster]

Hey FBA, sorry I was gone for so long. The semester is almost over and I’ve been pushing myself to my limit to bring my grades up to all A’s. It’s not worked. I have a 100, 96, 89 (so close), and a 79 in my AP Government class. I need my 89 in English to go up to an A, and I need to bring my stupid AP class up to at LEAST and 80. I’m taking the final either way in two weeks, but when I fail it, I want to still end the class with a B.

Some chicken drama has happened. So, I posted (or I think Notabitail posted it for me) about how my friend and I bought four show chickens from Meyer Hatchery. They grew up great! The two d’Uccles are AMAZING, and the two Polish were great. Well, my FFA advisor has been ticking me off with the chickens, because she doesn’t give a crap about them.
She made us move the chicks outside when they were three weeks old, and now that they are three months old, they are still in the tiny coop we moved them into because we have no where else to put them. Now, my friend and I know very well that the space they are in is too small, and we’ve been talking about buying or building a new coop for a while, we just haven’t done it yet.
I might want to mention that their tiny coop is in a much larger run that has another small coop for three adult chickens, but the three chooks have free roam of the run, while my four chicks are stuck in a tiny coop that one full grown chicken would be crammed into.
So, there’s a RIR rooster, a RIR hen, and then what I think is an EE hen, but I’m not sure. The rooster is a jerk, but the two hens are somewhat sweet.
Well, the doors on the small coop are flimsy and don’t lock very well, so there’s been times where our chicks have gotten out, but we’ve always been able to get them back in their coop with no deaths.

Well, Thanksgiving, my friend texted me and said that her polish pullet got out and was killed and eaten by the big chickens. Obviously I was furious and sad, and I can’t even imagine what she felt.
Well, we talked for a while and decided that we were going to actually build a new coop and make sure that we get our chicks away from our ag teachers chickens. My friend texted our teacher, by the way, told her what happened, and got no response.

The big chickens are at school to lay eggs (which they have never laid eggs, and are full grown, so there’s no point in them being there), so my friend and I decided to buy some new chicks that will lay a good amount of eggs a year, and we were planning on asking our ag teacher to bring her cannibalistic chickens back to her house.

So, come today, we are back at school. We talk to a different ag teacher (who is a huge animal person) and she agrees with us completely and says that she will ask the other ag teacher to remove her chickens. The ag teacher immediately shuts her down and says “it’s just a chicken, why does it matter?”
That obviously rubbed my friend and I the wrong way, and also the animal lover ag teacher, so she’s helping us with a few things. She said that she is going to talk to someone in charge of school programs and see if they will buy us a little coop to keep our three remaining chicks in, until we can build a big chicken coop that will hold 12 chickens. If the school won’t buy us a coop, she said that she’ll bring her old duck coop over to the school for us, but I don’t really want her to.

So, this is why I am posting… does anyone have any plans or any tips for how to build a chicken coop (with an attached run) that can hold 12 chickens… I think it should be around 98 square feet, from what I’ve seen for proper space for each chicken, but I might be wrong.
I’ve found a few designs that I like, but I’ll honestly go with anything secure that’ll keep them safe and happy. We have a space picked out for the coop, but we just need the materials and we need to build it. So any plans, tips, or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Hope everyone is doing well.

 

[kattabelly]

As in all specialty breeds some are naturals while others need training to bring out their best breed instincts.

Oh no, he didn't have the slightest bit of instinct or sense in his lovely thick skull He liked to chew on rocks and happily ran around with eight foot long "sticks" but otherwise had a soft mouth, and being given something to carry was his absolute favourite thing. Imagine a bull terrier cross that'd been given the brain of a retriever, only it was installed upside-down so he had to spend most of his time like this to compensate

Rotties are lovely dogs! I've never kept them but had a few rottie "friends" and one neighbour at a previous address who used to very enthusiastically guard my cabbages from the local wood pigeons

 

[Ikslo]

Hey FBA, sorry I was gone for so long. The semester is almost over and I’ve been pushing myself to my limit to bring my grades up to all A’s. It’s not worked. I have a 100, 96, 89 (so close), and a 79 in my AP Government class. I need my 89 in English to go up to an A, and I need to bring my stupid AP class up to at LEAST and 80. I’m taking the final either way in two weeks, but when I fail it, I want to still end the class with a B.

Some chicken drama has happened. So, I posted (or I think Notabitail posted it for me) about how my friend and I bought four show chickens from Meyer Hatchery. They grew up great! The two d’Uccles are AMAZING, and the two Polish were great. Well, my FFA advisor has been ticking me off with the chickens, because she doesn’t give a crap about them.
She made us move the chicks outside when they were three weeks old, and now that they are three months old, they are still in the tiny coop we moved them into because we have no where else to put them. Now, my friend and I know very well that the space they are in is too small, and we’ve been talking about buying or building a new coop for a while, we just haven’t done it yet.
I might want to mention that their tiny coop is in a much larger run that has another small coop for three adult chickens, but the three chooks have free roam of the run, while my four chicks are stuck in a tiny coop that one full grown chicken would be crammed into.
So, there’s a RIR rooster, a RIR hen, and then what I think is an EE hen, but I’m not sure. The rooster is a jerk, but the two hens are somewhat sweet.
Well, the doors on the small coop are flimsy and don’t lock very well, so there’s been times where our chicks have gotten out, but we’ve always been able to get them back in their coop with no deaths.

Well, Thanksgiving, my friend texted me and said that her polish pullet got out and was killed and eaten by the big chickens. Obviously I was furious and sad, and I can’t even imagine what she felt.
Well, we talked for a while and decided that we were going to actually build a new coop and make sure that we get our chicks away from our ag teachers chickens. My friend texted our teacher, by the way, told her what happened, and got no response.

The big chickens are at school to lay eggs (which they have never laid eggs, and are full grown, so there’s no point in them being there), so my friend and I decided to buy some new chicks that will lay a good amount of eggs a year, and we were planning on asking our ag teacher to bring her cannibalistic chickens back to her house.

So, come today, we are back at school. We talk to a different ag teacher (who is a huge animal person) and she agrees with us completely and says that she will ask the other ag teacher to remove her chickens. The ag teacher immediately shuts her down and says “it’s just a chicken, why does it matter?”
That obviously rubbed my friend and I the wrong way, and also the animal lover ag teacher, so she’s helping us with a few things. She said that she is going to talk to someone in charge of school programs and see if they will buy us a little coop to keep our three remaining chicks in, until we can build a big chicken coop that will hold 12 chickens. If the school won’t buy us a coop, she said that she’ll bring her old duck coop over to the school for us, but I don’t really want her to.

So, this is why I am posting… does anyone have any plans or any tips for how to build a chicken coop (with an attached run) that can hold 12 chickens… I think it should be around 98 square feet, from what I’ve seen for proper space for each chicken, but I might be wrong.
I’ve found a few designs that I like, but I’ll honestly go with anything secure that’ll keep them safe and happy. We have a space picked out for the coop, but we just need the materials and we need to build it. So any plans, tips, or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Hope everyone is doing well.

I have to admit I imagined myself not being very polite to that ag teacher! So sorry for the loss of your friends’ Polish.

(Sorry I don’t have any coop ideas. Mine is an existing barn lean to and as such I’ve never had to build a coop!)