Here is my submission for Fluffy butt Friday. My hens seem healthy currently, and even Magic’s derrière has clean feathers. In the picture they are tucking in to their daily scattering of dried grubs.

My eldest and I did another chicken check, where we check under wings for mites, check their vents, check their feet, and get a weight. Most of the chickens’ weight is still recovering from the winter, however Magic’s has gone down, which is not surprising since she is still in isolation with a healing foot. She is starting to shuffle around her enclosure, so I hope she is on the mend. Seashell also had a drop in weight. Turns out she had an infected foot, which we cleaned out and bandaged. Her feet are particularly prone to infection and bumbles. It probably doesn’t help that they are put together a little differently than the other chicken’s feet. Faverolles are supposed to have five toes, and the “extra” toes protrude from inside the foot. When they walk, they have to negotiate not only the terrain, but also those toes. Seashell’s legs are a little shorter, her feet rotate out a bit, and she has an extra nail on one of her extra toes. Makes for more scrapes and injuries to her feet.

I’ve been putting off a full chicken check for awhile. I’ve been spot checking under wings for mites, spot checking feet, and monitoring fluffy bums, but I heard that it hurts when they go through a molt, so didn’t want to pick them up and handle them much. Turns out I haven’t done weights since we lost Navi, Pooh, and Sunrise. Molting is lasting forever.

Well, the weather has been spectacular, with highs in the 80s and we had a morning of 70s when my eldest volunteered to help with chicken checks. We weighed all nine, checked under the wings for mites, checked vent condition, and checked their feet. Most of them needed a nail clip, some had bumbles, but only a few needed to be wrapped. I’ve suspected that they may have scaly leg mites, so put some natural healing ointment with tea tree and other essential oils in their legs. Taco was the only one where I was sure she has leg mites, as the scales on her legs were visibly lifted. We’ll treat her again with the ointment tomorrow. All of the chickens have lost weight. I hope it is just the molting and they will start packing on the ounces when they fully feather.

Jade has the flock beauty award in the bag. Her beard is glorious and her new feathers are crisp and lay beautifully. I think she is the one laying again too. We had a week of no eggs after Sunrise choked on a kernel and of grain and suffocated, but now we are getting an egg about every other day. Good thing I had some in the freezer.

The bumble foot occurrence has brought to light a puzzling error. Somehow we had two hens marked with a green and yellow band on the left foot. Wha? We don’t have two Sunrises, what the heck happened? To solve the mystery, we did a chicken health check, because that is a time when we separate the checked from the unchecked and handle each bird separately. The health check also revealed that we had another hen with no bands. We weighed, checked under wings for parasites (all clear), checked vents (two with dirty bums, which is down from last check), and checked feet. We found two more hens with bumble foot, and two that we soaked their feet in epsom salts to make sure it was mud and not bumble foot. Both “Sunrises” have bumble foot, but based on weight and temperament, we figured out that one was Magic, and took her extra yellow band off (still no clue why she had it). The bandless hen was Cockatrice. We soaked and removed the bumbles and wrapped up the treated feet. Navi still has a large crop, but it is not squishy. Chickens that showed weight loss last time have gained again. It was certainly the most intense health check we’ve done to date! Whew!

I replaced the glass top of my scale with a short piece of 1×4 to make it easier to weigh the chickens. We were using a small piece of rubber shelf liner on the glass, which was functional, but still hard for the hens to stand on, then the glass popped off, so I needed a different solution. So I routed a circle in the middle of the board to fit the screw knob and glued the screw knob to the board. It is much easier for the chickens to stand on this to get their weight for health checks! They are still restless, though, so weights have a definite error factor.

Speaking of health checks, since I fixed the scale, we were able to finally do the monthly health check. Magic and Pooh’s weights are down, but Cloud and Navi’s weight is up. Navi’s pendulous crop is back, but doesn’t seem to bother her. There were many dirty bums, so I think I need to cut back on scratch and treats. The weather is honestly too warm for scratch anyway. We treated some foot injuries and are keeping an eye on them. Everyone is walking Ok, for Faverolle waddles. They are really cute when they run, though.