Ribh's D'Coopage

[BY Bob]

I keep an audio file of my dearly departed Charly's purr on my laptop for emergencies (eg if I can't sleep during a flight)

I am really glad I did this silly thing because now I will have it. Isabel will be 17 soon. I hope we have many years left together but you never know.

 

[Shadrach]

When my lads get around to putting my steps back in down to the water I am going to try giving my girls some free range time on the beach. That's if I can herd them in the right direction...? And sorta keep them there. I imagine it's a very exciting place for chickens but we get wallabies as well as snakes & lizard's down there.

That should be interesting. Don't forget the camera!

 

[BY Bob]

My head says this is right & sensible but however hard I try my heart never seems to run in harness with my head. I find losing animals hard, however it happens & for whatever reason.

Me too. Very hard.

 

[BY Bob]

When my lads get around to putting my steps back in down to the water I am going to try giving my girls some free range time on the beach. That's if I can herd them in the right direction...? And sorta keep them there. I imagine it's a very exciting place for chickens but we get wallabies as well as snakes & lizard's down there.

Definitely will need video of that! So cool!

 

[BY Bob]

@MaryJanet has a lovely little flock & tells the most charming stories about them.
Bob's thread is as chatty as this one.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...s-of-our-flock.1286630/page-427#post-22106098

Mine was never as chatty as @Ribh but it sure has exploded lately. It is a ton of fun. I am loving it.

 

[Shadrach]

My head says this is right & sensible but however hard I try my heart never seems to run in harness with my head. I find losing animals hard, however it happens & for whatever reason.

It's quite difficult to explain without making myself out to be hard hearted which I'm not.
I want the chickens here to have full and interesting lives. It is easy to overlook that hens don't lay eggs for our breakfasts; they do it to hatch chicks. Reproduction is such a major part of life it is impossible for me to consider chickens fulfilled without doing this.
I know it isn't practical or sometimes even wanted by other keepers, but it's important to me, maybe even more important to me than it is to the hens. That's one point.
My initial interest wasn't stimulated by, Oh they are gorgeous, or, there's eggs and meat there,
I became curios when erecting the first fence here by the behaviour of a rooster. I wanted to know why he behaved in that particular fashion.

The more I watched, the more complicated they became. I got to like them because their behaviour started to become understandable. I can still remember the first time I saw something and knew what was going on and why. So, while I feel great affection for them all, I am trying to study them within certain constraints. As I've written before, in order to study free range chicken behaviour one has to let them behave.

Laying eggs, sitting on a clutch, hatching eggs and rearing chicks is such a fundamental facet of behaviour, that without being able to observe it, my understanding of what is going on would be extremely limited.
Their ancestors laid many fewer eggs. I couldn't for example let every hen sit and hatch every time she could. But, I have tried to make sure that every hen who has wanted to sit and hatch gets that opportunity and when possible, more than once. No hen had sat and hatched before I moved here. Over the generations the broodiness factor has increased to the point that the majority of hens will happily sit and two or three times a year. Even when the overall population is low, that could be an awful lot of chicks.
From what I've seen the hens don't seem to be negatively effected by the loss of a chick as long as there is still one or more left. It's been different if a hen has lost her only, or last chick.
For the first few weeks, protection of the chicks, and feeding of the chicks is primarily down to the hen. Not many die under the hens care here.
It's after they been introduced to the tribe and roost with the tribe that the greatest losses occur. The chicks status in the eyes of their mother changes in a horrifyingly short time.
When it does, the now pullets and cockerels, drop to the end of the line for feed, coop entry, roost space and to make matters worse, they need to stay close enough to the adults to hear the warning calls and learn their place in the hierarchy. This generally means they get pecked and bullied a lot. This is the stage where they tend to wander off and do their own thing. According to studies of jungle fowl this is pretty much what still happens.
It's quite apparent here that when there is more than one chick in the hatch they would form a separate tribe at this point. I've had pullets and cockerels go up the trees at this point with the cross breeds and the bantams.
If I had my way I would let them live in the trees. Circumstances mean they have to go into coops at night in general. I can't keep building coops.
So, I need a certain amount to get predated just to keep the numbers manageable; and, it is reasonably representative of what would happen if they were feral.
What I don't want is the mothers getting killed defending their chicks.

 

[CrazyChookChookLady]

How are you doing @CrazyChookChookLady ?

@Ribh I'm finally feeling much better. Thank you so much for asking! Today I feel like myself again. The stress of the spinal tap and spinal headache put me into a flare. All my joints hurt and I swell up until I feel like my skin is going to pop. This morning I woke up and all the pain was gone and so was the swelling.

I can't wait until we know exactly what this is we're dealing with, then hopefully I can start a maintenance medication to prevent these flares.

 

[Shadrach]

Here's Tribe 1 minus Treacle who is just out of the picture.

 

[CrazyChookChookLady]

Oh jeez, I have see you around of course, MaryJanet! Was having trouble picturing. Thank you for the invitation!

@Meg-in-MT, May I ask, were you on the FUGLY horse blog? I feel like I recognize your name, but I don't think it's from here.

 

[Ribh]

It's quite difficult to explain without making myself out to be hard hearted which I'm not.
I want the chickens here to have full and interesting lives. It is easy to overlook that hens don't lay eggs for our breakfasts; they do it to hatch chicks. Reproduction is such a major part of life it is impossible for me to consider chickens fulfilled without doing this.
I know it isn't practical or sometimes even wanted by other keepers, but it's important to me, maybe even more important to me than it is to the hens. That's one point.
My initial interest wasn't stimulated by, Oh they are gorgeous, or, there's eggs and meat there,
I became curios when erecting the first fence here by the behaviour of a rooster. I wanted to know why he behaved in that particular fashion.

The more I watched, the more complicated they became. I got to like them because their behaviour started to become understandable. I can still remember the first time I saw something and knew what was going on and why. So, while I feel great affection for them all, I am trying to study them within certain constraints. As I've written before, in order to study free range chicken behaviour one has to let them behave.

Laying eggs, sitting on a clutch, hatching eggs and rearing chicks is such a fundamental facet of behaviour, that without being able to observe it, my understanding of what is going on would be extremely limited.
Their ancestors laid many fewer eggs. I couldn't for example let every hen sit and hatch every time she could. But, I have tried to make sure that every hen who has wanted to sit and hatch gets that opportunity and when possible, more than once. No hen had sat and hatched before I moved here. Over the generations the broodiness factor has increased to the point that the majority of hens will happily sit and two or three times a year. Even when the overall population is low, that could be an awful lot of chicks.
From what I've seen the hens don't seem to be negatively effected by the loss of a chick as long as there is still one or more left. It's been different if a hen has lost her only, or last chick.
For the first few weeks, protection of the chicks, and feeding of the chicks is primarily down to the hen. Not many die under the hens care here.
It's after they been introduced to the tribe and roost with the tribe that the greatest losses occur. The chicks status in the eyes of their mother changes in a horrifyingly short time.
When it does, the now pullets and cockerels, drop to the end of the line for feed, coop entry, roost space and to make matters worse, they need to stay close enough to the adults to hear the warning calls and learn their place in the hierarchy. This generally means they get pecked and bullied a lot. This is the stage where they tend to wander off and do their own thing. According to studies of jungle fowl this is pretty much what still happens.
It's quite apparent here that when there is more than one chick in the hatch they would form a separate tribe at this point. I've had pullets and cockerels go up the trees at this point with the cross breeds and the bantams.
If I had my way I would let them live in the trees. Circumstances mean they have to go into coops at night in general. I can't keep building coops.
So, I need a certain amount to get predated just to keep the numbers manageable; and, it is reasonably representative of what would happen if they were feral.
What I don't want is the mothers getting killed defending their chicks.

Strangely enough, I do understand ~ & I've never thought you hard~hearted. Until fairly recently we have been more rural than urban with a lot of wildlife ~ a lot of predation. My youngest & I once watched a shark separate a dugong baby from its mother. Understandably it was a long time before that child would get in the water again. My observation says everything wants to continue to live & so I am sad when that doesn't happen even though I know many species are predators & others are prey. It is fascinating in its own way. One of my lads was showered in blood & feathers on the verandah one day from a hawk strike on a pigeon & I've done my share of wildlife rescues but though my head understands it still grieves my heart. Nature will always strike a balance. One of the comments I made to my man about the recent fires is that they won't need to cull the roos this year; the fires have done that for them.