Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[Ikslo]

This is a reminder, BUILD YOUR COOP, the chickens will appreciate it!

They seem happy with their digs. I just meant the coop was already here when I arrived on the property, and it’s built off the barn, a re-purposed lean to type structure. It’s not fancy, but it works!

 

[bgmathteach]

Tilly needs a little trim. But I agree. It's who they are. I can't see cutting it all away like some unnamed people do.

 

[SimpleJenn]

Birds

He wanted to share with her

Inspecting my offering


Polite young fella.

Baxter is lab/setter. Double bird dog. I'll stick with my pomeranian, he is an excellent watch dog and lap warmer.

 

[Ponypoor]

Our Silkies are fine cold or hot. It's the daily fluctuating temps that play havoc on us all. We are way moderate than you Northeners cuz we never get snow. It can get as low or near almost freezing at night but usually low 40F or high 30'sF at dusk & high 60's up to high 70's days. What's really strange is that when it's New Years Day it gets to the mid 80's clear & sunny hot during the famous Pasadena Rose Parade & our house rattles as the parade stealth bomber path flies over us! One year it was overkill when 3 stealth bombers were used!

In our last rains & winds our biggest canopy frame over the chicken sandbox collapsed so a new one is on order arriving next weekend. Hope we have time to put it up before the next rains. Our worst enemy here are the vicious damaging winds that make it feel colder.

These are a couple of our canopies after past rain/wind storms. Can't figure why the very vicious wind has to accompany the rains?! Guess we all have different weather issues to deal with!
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Wow yes your winds are legendary.

Snow load and freezing rain are bad here.

The long cold and dreary winter weather is hard on all the animals that are not native to here. Livestock that is better suited to dry plains and hot humid tropical weather - that is what are livestock come from. Yet they survive the winters - somehow.

 

[Ponypoor]

Now don't tell me Creation doesn't have a sense of humor

I love birds

Yep humour is what makes us human

 

[Ponypoor]

Monday mugs / derpy dog tax

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Awww! More babies?! Are they with a mama there?

 

[Ponypoor]

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.

Very sorry and sad to hear of the death of your poor chickie.

As for plans, one question I have is who is paying for this. Building a coop and run to house 12 chooks will be expensive.

My suggestion is to repurpose a shed like knoturavggrl has done, and attach one of those dog runs to it. You can likely get a 10x20 one used.

 

[Ponypoor]

I guess I have been ‘renamed’!

 

[Ponypoor]

HAHAHAHA here's Pentatonix: Chicken Edition!
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Have to say I have always enjoyed their music.

Pentatonic not the chooks. - though I enjoy them too

 

[Ponypoor]

Clyde the Brave

A few know that poor wee Clyde has been unwell for a bit. He is very wheezy and coughing - and not at all as active as usual. The Tylosin antibiotics have not cleared this up, so last night I started him on Amoxicillin.

Tonight he seems to be quite a bit improved which has me wondering if he has some sort of secondary infection to his initial one. At any rate I will keep him on the amoxicillin for a week.

I also took a tracheal swab from him and from Holly who has been coughing and sneezing.

These I will send off to be tested for MG, once I get results back I will move forward from there.