Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[RoyalChick]

Anyway, back to the important stuff in all this and that's the chickens!
A few of them do this when I clean and refill their water containor. They don't get their heads wet doing it either.
I, on the other hand managed to soak the bottoms of my trousers.
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How very good mannered of them!
Mine would not notice me filling the trough with clean water because they would be so distracted by drinking the dirty water I discarded from the trough as it soaks into the mud.

 

[pennyJo1960]

I had the great pleasure to have water buckets near empty yesterday .. I use nipples The one shown is 2 gallons use that at banties tractor. The same setup is on 5 gallon ones in the main coop. Yesterday through each one out the door to empty them . Last one slipped crahed in the mud splattering me with the cold water

 

[Shadrach]

Here are a few more studies. Most are still rather rudimentary but they are slowly improving and increasing in scope.
A very important study is in the last link where the incubation of a chickens egg is studied at great depth. There is no incubator made that can reproduce the incubation parameters that a hen can manage. There are serious implications in this.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/8/1/13/htm
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159111003285
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2066265
https://www.scielo.br/j/rbca/a/ZFYLhJkZ8VSVpXZSJmCcKvr/?lang=en

 

[Solanacae]

good People having been doing what you are doing for hundreds or thousands of years. Commercial feeds have only been around a few decades.

I’m hesitant to throw meat scraps out because I don’t want to be attracting predators to my coop area. Or my dogs, for that matter. I don’t bother sifting out the potato peelings and avocado skins, either. It just comes in the compost heap and I figure that the chickens (because they have plenty of other food options available to them) won’t eat what’s not good for them. And I’ve noticed that they leave the potato peelings and avocado skins alone, unless it’s to get at a tasty apple core or carrot peel that’s underneath it. Occasionally I’ll toss a piece of toast or some other table scrap into the compost bucket, or some unfinished yogurt the kids didn’t want.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

How very good mannered of them!
Mine would not notice me filling the trough with clean water because they would be so distracted by drinking the dirty water I discarded from the trough as it soaks into the mud.

My chickens do the same thing.

 

[Shadrach]

That gravity driven mist was falling when I arrived to let everyone out this afternoon. Despite the weather everybody came out and went foraging. The non layers rush to go a dig quickly, grab a few beakfulls of grass then settle near the trees.
The laying hens and the junior hens will keep foraging for the afternoon on and off.
Treat was coconut rice this afternoon. Maybe a teaspoonfull each. Most seem to like this. Not all of them like the same treats and the better fed they become the more picky they become.
By the time dusk came it was raining softly and Henry headed off to roost about ten minutes early. Most of the hens followed within a couple of minutes and everyone was in the coop before full dusk.

 

[Shadrach]

Doing much in the way of construction in the current weather isn't realistic. What I am going to try and do is open a gap in the allotment run fence and make an area enclosed with temporary hi vis plastic fence so the chickens can access new ground. It's very easy to see how a single breeding pair of jungle fowl need at least an acre of territory with decent forage to thrive watching how quickly this lot can work their way through the forage in the allotment run.
I hope that by opening up small areas outside the allotment run to them a step at a time they will find more of what they need without having to do much in the way of fence building.
Of course, you have to watch them. It is very easy to get out of the allotment run and regylar counts and visual tracking of who is where is important. I believe they would all go back to the coop at dusk if they could find their way back and once outside the allotment run it would be relatively easy for a hen to get trapped outside the run.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Hopefully Shadrach will accept this as unconventional TAX (from a children's book on World Folk Tales that I illustrated):

Why the Sun Comes Up When the Rooster Crows
A Folk Tale from China
​

Long ago, when the world was young, there wasn't just our sun in the sky. There were nine. Their blazing heat scorched the land. The earth grew hotter and hotter. The crops shriveled. People began to die.

The people tried to think of ways to block the heat of the nine suns. Finally, they decided to ask their best archer to shoot the suns out of the sky. He listened to their plan and agreed to help.

The next morning before sunrise, the archer climbed to the top of the highest mountain. As each sun appeared, he strung an arrow and, one by one, shot the suns. He did this eight times until there was only one sun left. As the last sun watched what happened to her sisters, she grew more and more afraid. She hid behind a mountain so that she would not be pierced by an arrow.

At first people celebrated their victory. They praised the archer for his great skill. But they soon realized that they couldn't live without the sun. The world was freezing cold. Nothing would grow. They called out to the hiding sun, but no matter what they said, she wouldn't come out.

A great meeting was called to decide what to do. "We must find someone who can convince the sun that we mean no harm."

A few people suggested Tiger. They said, "Tiger is a powerful animal. His words will be believed by the sun."

But Tiger's voice was so loud and sounded so much like a growl that the sun grew even more frightened.

One of the village elders spoke up. "Perhaps we need an animal that has a soothing voice. Why not ask Oriole? No one sings better than Oriole."

Oriole sang her sweetest song. Although the sun liked Oriole's singing, she still wouldn't come out. Many other birds tried, but none of them succeeded.

As last, another elder suggested Rooster. He argued, "It's true that Rooster doesn't sing as beautifully as Oriole, but he is fearless and won't give up." When people asked Rooster, he didn't hesitate. He strutted up to the top of the mountain and called out, "Cock-a-doodle-doo!"

The sun was still too scared to come out. Rooster crowed a second time, "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" A tiny bit of the sun peeked out from behind the mountain. She was still afraid she would be shot with an arrow. Rooster didn't give up. When he crowed a third time, the sun was convinced that it was safe. Her fear vanished, and she came out from behind the mountain in her full glory.

The crowd cheered. The sun was very pleased with their reaction. She was grateful to Rooster for finally convincing her to come out. To reward him, she took a bit of red out of the morning sky, made it into the shape of a comb, and placed it on top of Rooster's head.

To this day, Rooster is very proud that he saved the world. If you watch him in the barnyard, you will see that he struts about with his chest puffed out and the bright red comb on his head. And every morning when Rooster crows, the sun soon appears.
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Love this!

 

[Perris]

Here are a few more studies. Most are still rather rudimentary but they are slowly improving and increasing in scope.
A very important study is in the last link where the incubation of a chickens egg is studied at great depth. There is no incubator made that can reproduce the incubation parameters that a hen can manage. There are serious implications in this.

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/8/1/13/htm
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0168159111003285
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2066265
https://www.scielo.br/j/rbca/a/ZFYLhJkZ8VSVpXZSJmCcKvr/?lang=en

Thanks for these; they should save me from various chores this morning

I've only just got started, but have to offer a little annotation to a remark early on in the first one, "[chickens] have long been used as model organisms for vertebrate development" with a ref to something from 2005. In his History of Animals, Aristotle describes the daily development of the chicken embryo inside the egg (with the suggestion that the reader diy to confirm, btw, good empirical scientist that he was) - a 4th century bc version which holds up very well against https://www.thepoultrysite.com/articles/embryonic-development-day-by-day and usually astonishes anyone who knows about the topic when they read it. He saw more than most of us manage.

 

[Perris]

I guess tax is due for the last digression; this seems appropriate