Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

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Janeka is 4 years old today 🎉 hooray!
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ManueB said:
It seems like you have the opposite problem of most chicken keepers !
I hope your health has gotten a bit better since the last time you mentioned post COVID fatigue.

I haven't eaten chickens in a very long time and the only time I ate a backyard chicken was a very old hen, so I have a silly question. Do people refrain from eating young pullets because they don't taste good or because it's economically more interesting to keep them for the eggs / breeding ?
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The few injured pullets that I dispatched tasted great.
It's more of an emotional reason. I know people want pullets and I feel bad dispatching a perfectly good one. They don't cause any problems. The boys cause lots of problems and make it easy. The 16 wks boys dress out around 5 lbs, (10k) and girls below. The cockerels will feed me for the week, but I need 1 and a half girls. So I have to take another life.

Thanks for asking but still fatigued after an hour or less. Trying to plant potatoes this week. I work a half hour and my back complains. Then I take a break.
 
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Perris said:
I've got 11 cartons of eggs to sell today (a week's worth from 15 hens, 4 of them over 3 years old, and ignoring the dozen eggs we've eaten), and that's without whatever's laid today :D
That is a record for me, and I think will do as a conclusion to my little experiment on avoiding commercial feed entirely, from hatch.

The pullets who have never eaten commercial feed survived to maturity better than any before, and are laying better than any pullets I've had before. And the old girls are laying well too.
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I think I've missed that this experiment was happening. Have you shared what you're feeding instead?

I can't imagine not providing commercial feed, but I'm also a beginner (which I'll keep saying until we're 10 years in, I think) who may not intuit issues fast enough to adjust feeding strategy.

Our 3-year-olds are laying like champs. They took a more pronounced break in the fall/winter, but their numbers are the same now as they were in year 1, for better or worse.
 
HiEverybirdy said:
I think I've missed that this experiment was happening. Have you shared what you're feeding instead?

I can't imagine not providing commercial feed, but I'm also a beginner (which I'll keep saying until we're 10 years in, I think) who may not intuit issues fast enough to adjust feeding strategy.

Our 3-year-olds are laying like champs. They took a more pronounced break in the fall/winter, but their numbers are the same now as they were in year 1, for better or worse.
Click to expand...
It's scattered about in the pages back on this thread, but there is an adult feed summary here
https://www.backyardchickens.com/posts/26617476/
and the chick feed is brought together here
https://www.backyardchickens.com/posts/26419330/
 
Stilton goes to roost early. Always has. I figured it was because roostering is hard work.

Some of the lower ranked ladies join him, along with the Langshan who has recently grown out her wattles and comb and started crowing in the mornings (plot twist!). Last in that yard are the 2 largest Langshans, who do what they want as a general rule.

Merle usually roosts first in his group but may also bungle back down the ramp to say goodnight to Andre with a fence fight. Earlier in the spring, he was roosting and rushing back out as many as 3 times before settling in. It's a 50' sprint each way. Roostering's hard work!

Except for Andre, who's still a bachelor. He stays out the longest of all the birds, whether he's waiting for Merle or me to visit. If Merle doesn't, I'll go stroke his wattles for a minute.

His eyesight is poor in twilight, so he needs ample heads before being touched or I'll get a beak to the hand and he gets a gentle beak boop before the wattle rub.

Andre's full name is Andre the Giant Chicken, but he's small compared to @janiedoe 's crew! Just 9.5lb / 4.3kg. The way he holds his feathers out makes him looks massive, but he stays svelte underneath.
 
HiEverybirdy said:
Stilton goes to roost early. Always has. I figured it was because roostering is hard work.

Some of the lower ranked ladies join him, along with the Langshan who has recently grown out her wattles and comb and started crowing in the mornings (plot twist!). Last in that yard are the 2 largest Langshans, who do what they want as a general rule.

Merle usually roosts first in his group but may also bungle back down the ramp to say goodnight to Andre with a fence fight. Earlier in the spring, he was roosting and rushing back out as many as 3 times before settling in. It's a 50' sprint each way. Roostering's hard work!

Except for Andre, who's still a bachelor. He stays out the longest of all the birds, whether he's waiting for Merle or me to visit. If Merle doesn't, I'll go stroke his wattles for a minute.

His eyesight is poor in twilight, so he needs ample heads before being touched or I'll get a beak to the hand and he gets a gentle beak boop before the wattle rub.

Andre's full name is Andre the Giant Chicken, but he's small compared to @janiedoe 's crew! Just 9.5lb / 4.3kg. The way he holds his feathers out makes him looks massive, but he stays svelte underneath.
Click to expand...
I'm a big fan of the langshans. I'd love to see some flock pictures when you get around to it.
 

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