Developing My Own Breed Of Large Gamefowl For Free Range Survival (Junglefowl x Liege)

[Appalachian homestead]

Thanks! That's one of those solutions that's so simple I don't know why I didn't think of it myself

 

[Appalachian homestead]

I don't know how you get all of your high quality pictures. Mine are always far away, blurry, weird poses, or all three.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

View attachment 3214082
I don't know how you get all of your high quality pictures. Mine are always far away, blurry, weird poses, or all three.

Those look like pretty woods.

I use a low-mid grade professional camera with a nicer telescopic lens. And I take a lot of pics. I may sort through 100 pics to find one that came out good.

 

[Appalachian homestead]

Those look like pretty woods.

I use a low-mid grade professional camera with a nicer telescopic lens. And I take a lot of pics. I may sort through 100 pics to find one that came out good.

I only have a cheap smart phone so that doesn't help.
The woods are predominantly oak and hickory with a good amount of wild blueberries. Not much underbrush except for the blueberries. The blueface spend more time foraging through the woods than my layers,who prefer to stay closer to the barn. I have also have pasture and a patch of weeds that I leave just for the chickens. The weeds are thistle ,ragweed , and pigweed 5 feet high. They have tunnels and dust baths all through it. It gives them cover from predators and also shade. They also eat the seeds.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I pulled the 3/4 Liege off of free range a couple of days ago. All 7 got sick with lethargy and stumbling, one died. Now locked in a coop they seem to be recovering. I think they got poisoned from the saltbush they ate.

If they make a full recovery, they won’t have it again. That seems to be the pattern.

Jon Jon, the BF stag I lost to the eagle several months ago, had eaten saltbush under my observation when being turned out to free range and he was in a weakened state when the eagle killed him but he was recovering.

Saltbush is everywhere on my farm. Too prevalent to be eradicated. Why some chickens are eating it and others are not, I do not know. Perhaps they all are and only some are effected by the toxicity. Also for those that recover and never have it again, I do not know if that means their body developed a resistance to the toxins or whether it means the bird learns to avoid it.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

It is also possible that there is some other ailment at work and the chickens are eating the salt bush as a treatment. But I doubt it to the extent that symptoms only ever start after saltbush consumption and the symptoms are consistent with saltbush poisoning from the literature. This especially effects birds I coddle for a long time in a coop before turning out.

One issue I’m considering is that all of these birds that immediately run to the salt bush are large bodied birds. Going a lifetime without foraging to finding their own food and yet not having much access to greens, to having to actively seek out food and being surrounded by greenery, may be encouraging them to eat whatever they come across. Both brooding areas where I turn the birds out from have large saltbushs within 10-15 steps. I’ve seen birds go to the saltbush as fast as 30 minutes after being turned out but never longer than a day.

 

[Molpet]

Going a lifetime without foraging to finding their own food and yet not having much access to greens, to having to actively seek out food and being surrounded by greenery, may be encouraging them to eat whatever they come across. Both brooding areas where I turn the birds out from have large saltbushs within 10-15 steps. I’ve seen birds go to the saltbush as fast as 30 minutes after being turned out but never longer than a day.

I have seen my broodies scold a chick for eating tomato leaves... which are supposed to be bad for them. .... I also have seen a broody trying to get chicks to eat buckthorn berries and the chicks spit them out and yell at the hen.

 

[NatJ]

One issue I’m considering is that all of these birds that immediately run to the salt bush are large bodied birds. Going a lifetime without foraging to finding their own food and yet not having much access to greens, to having to actively seek out food and being surrounded by greenery, may be encouraging them to eat whatever they come across.

I wonder if you could affect that by providing some greens in their pens before you let them loose-- either safe ones so they can learn that THESE ones are good, or maybe some of the saltbush so they can have a mild bad experience with it, and will know to avoid it when you do turn them loose.

 

[ColtHandorf]

Interesting. I'd never heard of saltbush and did some googling. Seems it's a common plant that is commercially grown in Australia for livestock forage?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Interesting. I'd never heard of saltbush and did some googling. Seems it's a common plant that is commercially grown in Australia for livestock forage?

That’s a different plant. What we call salt bush here is a kind of baccharis.

https://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/shrub/bachal/all.html

Per the article, it takes about 2% of a chick’s body weight in consumption to cause toxicity.

Whitetail deer are immune to it and love to browse on it. Sometimes hunting locations in these parts are chosen based on heavy prevalence of salt bush. It is toxic to cows but they generally don’t consume it anyhow.