BDutch's bantam flock & natural breeding projects #5 🪺 🪺 and #6

[BDutch]

I had a bantam tribe free ranging in Catalonia along with Marans and crosses. They made a very solid and stable tribe. They took in one Marans cross when the Marans threw her out and Harold, the senior rooster made one very obvious invitation to another single hen a few years later. I liked them. I thought their social skills excellent. These were good foragers and more predator aware than the crosses in particular.

I don't know the cat and I don't know your chickens. What I do know broody mums don't care how big and scary you are and when they kick off it's something to see. They are fast. Faster than any rooster of the breeds we had. I did have some die defending their chicks. We had dogs, sheep, donkeys, muscovies and all sorts of predators. Mum was usually out with the chicks on the land on day two or three.

Niether you nor I can keep these creatures coming to harm.
You won't get free range benefits in your garden, it just isn't big enough. On the other hand the dangers are considerably less. I would let everyone out when you are there to supervise.

Thanks for sharing your experience and view. I do think it’s hard to imagine for an outsider how our garden and surroundings are for chickens. And in what ways they have to coop with predators. I lost many chicks/chickens to (unknown) predators. Many more than to health problems.

Last year I decided to keep future chicks inside when I can’t/don’t supervise. I haven’t retired and cant keep an eye on them very often and on top of that, I’m not the type of person who enjoys to sit outside in the cold like you do.

Last year I lost both Dutch pullets when I worked at home at our diner table (laptop) and did watch now and then. But I tend to forget the world around ne when working. I lost them probably to a predator in the municipality field with blackberries and high grasses behind our garden. The pullets were like Mow, didn’t stay with the rest of the flock (no rooster, not free ranging all day, so I can’t say tribe)

Our garden isn’t big, but not closed of with fences. When the chickens free range they go to the municipality's field and the neighbours gardens too. The green area of the municipality is an ecological zone. It has a well with a small stream in it. A very attractive area for wild life, and cats.

This new chick grows up very protected now. With 2 mama’s in a confined space of 6m2. It’s closed of from the main run, so the other 4 can free range a couple of hours each day. I thought it would be my best option with 4 neighbour cats and a few visiting cats once in a while too. I don’t trust any cat with chicks and dont even trust 2 strange cats very much with my small bantams.
The 2 visiting cats: black with white socks and a grey striped tom. I have seen both hunt my chickens.

The neighbour cats are often in our garden. And two even come into the run. One to eat chick feed and one to hunt sparrows or to have a nap in the sand bath area.

The black cat with white socks is a nasty newcomer this year. On the other hand I haven’t seen the grey striped tom for quite a while. Hopefully he had a severe car crash . But even without these cats there are dangers out there to fear: foxes, polecats, buzzards, dogs, … and for chicks I can add a few more.

When I get home from our vacation next week, Tintin will be 4 weeks old and I do consider to let him free range with both mama’s at the end of the day to start with, see how they behave, and take one step at a time.
******

Geese, yesterday at the start of a famous levada trail to the green waterfall on Madeira.

In between there where several tunnels.

The last meters to the endpoint.

 

[Perris]

Madeira looks fabulous. The wine's a treat too
Not sure about geese on a trail though...I assume they're well fenced if their 'coop' is indicative

 

[BDutch]

Madeira looks fabulous. The wine's a treat too
Not sure about geese on a trail though...I assume they're well fenced if their 'coop' is indicative

Le landscape is magnificent. The madeira wine is rather sweet to my taste. But a few nips are fine.
Madeira has more sweet alcoholic stuf. Poncho a famous drink with fruits, sugarcane and rum. The coffees they make are great though. ️

Poncho (rum) festival in Funchal.

The geese were not on the trail. But very near to the starting point. Beside the short cut from the parking to the trail. And yes, the nice house is a geese coop. Now I remember there was a fence around it.

We started rather late to walk the trail. We were glad we didn’t go earlier because the path was busy and at many points there was only room for one hiker at a time. With a ravine on one side and the levada (canal) at the other side. Happily they made lots of fences beside the path. But waiting and squeezing was part of the experience on the way up. On the way back we hardly saw any hikers and we enjoyed the evening sun which was still up , coming over the mountain until 20 h.

At the end of the trail it was prohibited to walk the last meters. My daughter told me there was a collapse a few years ago shortly before she visited madeira.
The ongoing track on the other side of the stream was closed too. And yesterday when we wanted to start another famous track it was closed too without any explanation.

 

[NanaK]

Thanks for sharing your experience and view. I do think it’s hard to imagine for an outsider how our garden and surroundings are for chickens. And in what ways they have to coop with predators. I lost many chicks/chickens to (unknown) predators. Many more than to health problems.

Last year I decided to keep future chicks inside when I can’t/don’t supervise. I haven’t retired and cant keep an eye on them very often and on top of that, I’m not the type of person who enjoys to sit outside in the cold like you do.

Last year I lost both Dutch pullets when I worked at home at our diner table (laptop) and did watch now and then. But I tend to forget the world around ne when working. I lost them probably to a predator in the municipality field with blackberries and high grasses behind our garden. The pullets were like Mow, didn’t stay with the rest of the flock (no rooster, not free ranging all day, so I can’t say tribe)

Our garden isn’t big, but not closed of with fences. When the chickens free range they go to the municipality's field and the neighbours gardens too. The green area of the municipality is an ecological zone. It has a well with a small stream in it. A very attractive area for wild life, and cats.

This new chick grows up very protected now. With 2 mama’s in a confined space of 6m2. It’s closed of from the main run, so the other 4 can free range a couple of hours each day. I thought it would be my best option with 4 neighbour cats and a few visiting cats once in a while too. I don’t trust any cat with chicks and dont even trust 2 strange cats very much with my small bantams.
The 2 visiting cats: black with white socks and a grey striped tom. I have seen both hunt my chickens.

The neighbour cats are often in our garden. And two even come into the run. One to eat chick feed and one to hunt sparrows or to have a nap in the sand bath area.

The black cat with white socks is a nasty newcomer this year. On the other hand I haven’t seen the grey striped tom for quite a while. Hopefully he had a severe car crash . But even without these cats there are dangers out there to fear: foxes, polecats, buzzards, dogs, … and for chicks I can add a few more.

When I get home from our vacation next week, Tintin will be 4 weeks old and I do consider to let him free range with both mama’s at the end of the day to start with, see how they behave, and take one step at a time.
******

Geese, yesterday at the start of a famous levada trail to the green waterfall on Madeira.
View attachment 3805587

In between there where several tunnels.
View attachment 3805589

The last meters to the endpoint.
View attachment 3805588

View attachment 3805590

What a beautiful place!
Thanks for sharing!

 

[BDutch]

We made another hike today in an Unesco protected area with lots of the oldest trees on earth : tree ferns. They are really bizar. Btw I didn’t see any dinosaur’s.

The end point of our hike with a view over ‘Eagles rock’ on the north coast of Madeira.

 

[MaryJanet]

View attachment 3806217We made another hike today in an Unesco protected area with lots of the oldest trees on earth : tree ferns. They are really bizar. Btw I didn’t see any dinosaur’s.

The end point of our hike with a biew over ‘Eagles rock’ on the north coast of Madeira.
View attachment 3806223

What a view!

 

[Sequel]

View attachment 3806217We made another hike today in an Unesco protected area with lots of the oldest trees on earth : tree ferns. They are really bizar. Btw I didn’t see any dinosaur’s.

The end point of our hike with a biew over ‘Eagles rock’ on the north coast of Madeira.
View attachment 3806223

That is stunning!!!

 

[Shadrach]

Sure, So convenient to hatch with broodies and to let them give the chicks a descent schooling. But if broodies don’t tolerate me, and even attack me there is something going the wrong way. My first batch were incubator chicks, friendly towards me and more easy going.
I learned my lesson. Katrientje, Pearl and Janice are not friendly and therefore I wont let them hatch any chicks.

While you have this attitude you are always going to have problems.
Why would a broody hen want to be friendly towards you? Why would any chicken want to be your friend come to that.
I've got so much to say on a number of topics I've read on this thread I just don't know where to start.
My first words of advice is kill the cats. No need to make a big deal of it. Just have them disappear. They're not wildlife and the owners like most cat owners don't give a damn about what their cats get up to. In Catalonia the dogs killed any cats that strayed onto the property if they could catch them.

 

[fluffycrow]

In Catalonia the dogs killed any cats that strayed onto the property if they could catch them.

Same here

 

[BDutch]

L

While you have this attitude you are always going to have problems.
Why would a broody hen want to be friendly towards you? Why would any chicken want to be your friend come to that.

Katrientje and Pearl are not a real problem. I overreacted on these two.
But Janice really is a no go. If I take extra eggs away from the nest or want to see how many eggs have hatched , I don’t want to be attacked. Black and Ini mini were always friendly towards me. So I do prefer those two as broodies. But I don’t always have a choice.

I've got so much to say on a number of topics I've read on this thread I just don't know where to start.

Go ahead if you like to. You have so much more experience and I like to hear your opinion.

My first words of advice is kill the cats. No need to make a big deal of it. Just have them disappear. They're not wildlife and the owners like most cat owners don't give a damn about what their cats get up to. In Catalonia the dogs killed any cats that strayed onto the property if they could catch them.

Can’t. For 2 reasons:

1 I can’t kill an animal like a cat, dog, pig, horse, chicken, rabbit, etc. I am too sensitive to manage that. I feel for them/pity them when they have a poor life, like I feel/pity humans who have a poor life.

As a kid I wanted to become a vet to cure sick (loved) animals. Until I realised that killing is part of the job. I was really upset when I realised a horse gets killed by a vet if he brakes a leg/ankle.

2 Cats are pets here. Very different from the cats you knew in Catalonia. Or the stray cats /restaurant cats in Greece. People here often love them as other people like dogs. Maybe like Rhib and other Caturday people?. Most cats live in the owners houses at least 50% of the time and well taken care for.

Both my neighbours take their cats to the vet if something is wrong with them. Most people here do so. It would be cruel and useless to kill such a cat. They would replace their cat within a couple of months.