Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[featherhead007]

I say yes!

I gave them one, and they gobbled it down.

 

[featherhead007]

I gave them one, and they gobbled it down.

Cheese went first, then the pasta, then the kale

 

[featherhead007]

Dessert, they got a mini seedless watermelon

 

[ChicoryBlue]

Personally, if one end is that wet, I would get some pallets, tear apart one or two to make the tops of the others solid, and put them in the wet corner/end so that the bedding doesn't get saturated. You want it to compost (so some moisture), but not to mold!

So, I would rake/hoe out - at least the wet end completely, and the dry end some (maybe 1/2, as you do want some 'starter' microbes for the deep litter method), put the pallets (with solid tops by adding extra boards in the spaces) down on the wet end, then top up all the bedding. You might have to trim a pallet so that they fit together inside the run based on the width.

New ramial chips are good - if they are really coarse, then a light coating of shavings on top.

Just my thoughts. Do what seems reasonable and practical to you - as what I am suggesting - on top of the roof now - is a lot of extra work. That said, long term it will probably make it easier on you and more comfortable for the chickens - with less extra shaving needed - in the future. I am constantly playing 'clean-up' in my uncovered run with all the rain we are having - and it is a LOT of work, and with the ducks and their wet evacuations, it just gets disgusting if I don't between them and the constant rain - especially in the area that I can't just willy-nilly add bedding due to the gate.

I basically let stuff build up higher and higher and only dig it out when I actually need a bucket to put around a plant, feed the roses etc.
Most of mine is too dry so it doesn't compost it sort of degrades in a dry way. But I do have a couple of wet corners - I think they relate to the overflow pipe of a drywell and the slope feeds that water right into one corner.
In the wet corner I find everything rots down into nice compost.
I think it is important to try and use grading to keep outside water from coming in - put a berm around the area to direct water away - and to help it flow out again so it doesn't sit there.
If it really is a high water table (ie water coming up from below) then I think you may want to raise the area a bit. I see @bgmathteach suggests a pallet. You could even use a bunch of logs or something like that just to get the floor they walk on above the standing water.

Yes, 100% agree with this, and with @RoyalChick 's suggestion. My pallet idea was with the thought that it would be hard to effectively dig in then through/under the pen/pen wall to create an effective drainage ditch/french drain. But with the standing water at times, and the mushrooms, it sounds like it is just too wet and you will get (or already have) mold, and that can be dangerous to the chickens. If you are able to either get above the water (with pallets or logs), or drain it away, that would be/should be the goal, I think.

[Just an fyi: mushrooms are fungi, not mold, and as such are not necessarily bad - depends on the variety - but the moisture they need indicates that it is too wet, imho, in that area.]

Finding a way to drain the standing water by digging a ditch (it doesn’t take much) and stopping new water coming in would be my first priorities.

Thank you thank you thank you!
The plan is to clean out the litter, raise the floor somehow, and especially divert water away, replacing with new litter.

Diverting water - You all made me realize what should be obvious here, the water coming off the roof is a problem. That's the North side and is wet side. Doh! I thought it would go East into the swale there, (dug to keep the hillside water away) but it sits on the hard-packed shale and tries to drain slightly downhill, which is seemingly not East toward the swale but South, through the run. A gutter is in order! Removable for the winter, if that is possible or desirable?

Looking East

Finding a way to drain the standing water by digging a ditch (it doesn’t take much) and stopping new water coming in would be my first priorities.

We could dig out the swale and fix that part if necessary, but otherwise digging anywhere here is really hard, pick-ax work (the hillside is shale, the swale is stone over a pipe, then the driveway is shale).

The middle of the run, easy to see the left North damp litter. (Yes I clean up feed, the hopper near- edge was too full and Butters sweeps, and I haven't installed the higher lip edge I got for the feeder, it wasn't necessary.)

Looking West, see the right North corner

 

[RoyalChick]

Thank you thank you thank you!
The plan is to clean out the litter, raise the floor somehow, and especially divert water away, replacing with new litter.

Diverting water - You all made me realize what should be obvious here, the water coming off the roof is a problem. That's the North side and is wet side. Doh! I thought it would go East into the swale there, (dug to keep the hillside water away) but it sits on the hard-packed shale and tries to drain slightly downhill, which is seemingly not East toward the swale but South, through the run. A gutter is in order! Removable for the winter, if that is possible or desirable?

Looking East
View attachment 3635636

We could dig out the swale and fix that part if necessary, but otherwise digging anywhere here is really hard, pick-ax work (the hillside is shale, the swale is stone over a pipe, then the driveway is shale).

The middle of the run, easy to see the left North damp litter. (Yes I clean up feed, the hopper near- edge was too full and Butters sweeps, and I haven't installed the higher lip edge I got for the feeder, it wasn't necessary.)
View attachment 3635637
Looking West, see the right North corner
View attachment 3635638

I assume that is on a dry day as that doesn’t look too bad at all.
I will get some pictures of my damp areas for comparison.
What I meant by it doesn’t take much was not the ease of digging but the surprisingly minimal amount of slope that is needed to get water to drain away. The slope may not even be visible to the naked eye but still work as drainage.

 

[bgmathteach]

It sounds like you have got in a bit over your head and maybe need to take a step back and figure a plan for managing flock size. I have no idea how to do that as I have only ever had chickens.

I think the first step would be to separate the males and the females if at all possible, so they can't breed and raise additional young. It may be easy - or not. Maybe the easiest way would be to put dividers up in each pen so that they can't mate, but would still 'be together'. (I do not know if multiple males of that species can be house together without females, or if they will fight each other. Ditto with females - are they territorial in general?)

I would then get started on trying to sell as many as possible. If you don't want to raise them anymore - sell all of them, but keeping them from breeding will enable you to get stability until you are able to sell them. If you keep any, keep your best breeders in terms of conformation and personality, and limit it to a number you can manage WHILE KEEPING IN MIND their capacity to reproduce - so only keep pairs where you can handle and sell or manage the resulting offspring. AND I would still think about some sort of 'birth/hatch control '- like the divided pens if that will work, so you don't get into this situation again.

I am assuming it is very emotionally trying to know you need to down size/cull - but that IS part of keeping animals. You are learning a very valuable lesson right now - when the stakes are somewhat low - managing your animals. Much better to learn it now, then maybe when you are an adult and it comes down to feeding you or the birds. It is then a horrible decision. At least now, though trying - it seems like if you can limit the number hatching going forward, you can sell off the 'extra' - even if it takes a while - until you get either all of them gone, or to a point you can manage effectively.

Would they survive on their own or are you effectively setting them up to die slowly of starvation
- And conversely, might they be too successful and breed and compete with native wild birds

Both of these outcomes would be terrible to have happen. And, not only might they starve - but being caged birds, they are probably NOT as savvy in terms of good nesting spots, nor evading other animals predator wise, and could quite easily become another animal's dinner.

 

[SimpleJenn]

My uncle, sadly, froze eggs from his tiger finches. It was sad but necessary because he didn't have the resources to let them breed. And it was in the 1990s so they weren't popular as pets.

 

[RoyalChick]

My uncle, sadly, froze eggs from his tiger finches. It was sad but necessary because he didn't have the resources to let them breed. And it was in the 1990s so they weren't popular as pets.

Well that is one relatively simple answer - collect the eggs and scramble them up to feed them or the chickens.

 

[RoyalChick]

Sylvie took a break from laying yesterday and adjusted the production line.
Today she laid a perfect deep, dark brown doll-house sized egg.
I would need about a dozen to make an omelet!

 

[TX Chick Noob]

I think something is wrong with Jasmine (my EE). She hasn’t laid an egg in over a week maybe even two weeks. I didn’t think anything of it at first because she had an impacted crop awhile ago, and I know they sometimes don’t lay well for a little while after that resolves. I only had to give her coconut oil and massages a few days for it to resolve. I actually had several that I had to treat because when we first started letting them out they overdid it a little on grass.

Everyone else seems fine now, but Jasmine isn’t eating much. I tried tempting her with some mash this morning and she didn’t even try to eat it until I put some in her beak, and then only a few bites. If I take out scratch or anything she will run after it and eat a little, but she also seems a little slower getting to it. She also just seems more nervous/timid than usual. She doesn’t seem egg bound, she isn’t walking or standing weird. They all seem to be molting a little. Her comb is still red. Haven’t caught her pooping to know about that.

I’m at a loss of what else to even check for.