Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[no fly zone]

It's just one more conspiracy theory based on zero evidence.
I'm not quite sure why some here are taking it seriously.

It has a lot to do with who owns and/or runs the corporations that own the companies that make the feed.

 

[Molpet]

Could be pesticide also
https://www.ewg.org/research/ewg-in...-chemical-chlormequat-found-popular-oat-based

But I still think it's newbies

 

[BDutch]

Could be pesticide also
https://www.ewg.org/research/ewg-in...-chemical-chlormequat-found-popular-oat-based

But I still think it's newbies

No harm to eat organic.
Prefer to save on buying new clothes, new gadgets, new furniture, but not on quality feed for me and my chickens.

Not a conspiracy: Pesticides and bad air quality influences fertility.

 

[Molpet]

No harm to eat organic.
Prefer to save on buying new clothes, new gadgets, new furniture, but not on quality feed for me and my chickens.

Not a conspiracy: Pesticides and bad air quality influences fertility.

I buy as much organic as I can

 

[Iluveggers]

No harm to eat organic.
Prefer to save on buying new clothes, new gadgets, new furniture, but not on quality feed for me and my chickens.

Not a conspiracy: Pesticides and bad air quality influences fertility.

Agreed. I’m super cheap when it comes to certain things like clothes and household supplies. Will spend extra for organic, local and fresh food for the family, and my chickens (since they supply us with food too.) I have been buying them their own bag of spinach and growing sprouts for them all winter. Spoiled girls!

 

[pennyJo1960]

This is in the banty coop today and the dirt bath the adult Son and I made.

 

[Shadrach]

No harm to eat organic.
Prefer to save on buying new clothes, new gadgets, new furniture, but not on quality feed for me and my chickens.

Not a conspiracy: Pesticides and bad air quality influences fertility.

The logistics of purposely adding chemicals to enough feed to have any impact on the laying in backyard chickens that would even register as a percaentage in loss of egg sales for the major egg producers make the idea impracticable.
It also doesn't make much economic sense given the scales involved.
A reduction in feed quality may impact a hens yearly production but hens still lay eggs with sub par nutrition as I've seen at the allotments.

 

[micstrachan]

Interesting day. 7C a light breeze and overcast.
There was a small amount of the pellets I left last night left but they hadn't had any other food, nor had the geese. Everything was exactly as I left it.
View attachment 3392712
I got the cleaning and water done straight away and had them out on the allotment for a couple of hours.

These past couple of weeks with the chickens being on the allotment is much closer to how I think chickens should be kept. I dug, they spread and debugged.
Lima needs keeping an eye on because she dashes off to find something new, or back to the bush she's been excavating. There are tiny worm like bugs living around the roots of the bush and there are lots of them.
View attachment 3392711

This is my new plot. In the rough on the right are a couple of raspberry bushes and a gooseberry bush. There is also a fruit tree of some variety growing. I'm going to plant in the left hand side down to where Henry and the hens are standing in the first picture.
View attachment 3392713
View attachment 3392715View attachment 3392717View attachment 3392714
That's Fret rearranging my weed pile. She's just checking.
There were bits of board partially buried along some of the edges. The chickens and me with a spade can keep the edges clean. They shifted quite a lot of soil this afternoon. They weren't interested in the worms I dug up; three different types of worm.
Fret and Ella eat slaters (a type of wood louse), Lima will eat a couple and decide there are tastier things it seems, and Carbon won't touch them. Carbon out of all the hens is the most nervous about being out and often goes back to just inside the allotment run gate and watches the others. She was a bit more confident today.
Lima has decided that standing on the fork edge is the best way to ensure she doesn't miss anything.
View attachment 3392716View attachment 3392710

Something alarmed Fret and Lima while they were under their favourite bush and they ran/flew back to the allotment run. They were fast enough.

Fret laid went to lay an egg and when she had finished she stood on the coop ramp and called for Henry. Henry was out on the allotment with me. Henry responded and went to collect her. This is the first time I've seen Henry do a proper escort job. It seems that in both the coop run and allotment run are considered safe by Henry and he doesn't bother collecting the hens. On the allotment itself is different even though the distance between him and the hen may be less.
I also saw Henry herd Ella. He doesn't do that in the runs; he hackle flashes them.
A good day was had by all I think.
View attachment 3392706

That sounds like a wonderful day! Lots of proper chicken behavior!

 

[Perris]

It's just one more conspiracy theory based on zero evidence.
I'm not quite sure why some here are taking it seriously.

it has transpired that at least some people have unknowingly been feeding old feed, and some warehouses and stores are better than others at rotating their stock properly. Milled stuff loses its nutritional value quite quickly.

 

[BDutch]

The logistics of purposely adding chemicals to enough feed to have any impact on the laying in backyard chickens that would even register as a percaentage in loss of egg sales for the major egg producers make the idea impracticable.
It also doesn't make much economic sense given the scales involved.
A reduction in feed quality may impact a hens yearly production but hens still lay eggs with sub par nutrition as I've seen at the allotments.

Right. It doesn’t make sense. But producers do things that makes no sense as long as they can make more money.

Many growers do add herbicides and pesticides on the crops. In the next step where producers of layer would be adding even more would be ridiculous. Unless it is to keep fungi out or whatever the problem they encounter.

FYI: Soy and corn coming from plantations in Brazil (gmo) contains so much poison that it’s forbidden to use this for human food.
The residue’s in eggs and meat are less prominent. And beneath what is considered as dangerous.

Just thinking out loud
I’m wondering why the organic feed has less (on average) than gmo feed ….
Maybe this could be true (1): ‘The mills put more proteins in feed that contains gmo soy as in organic feed, because they need more to compensate for the poisons.”

Or this (2): Hens that free range need less proteins in their feed because the gather proteins (worms, insects) with free ranging.