Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[TropicalChickies]

I am only having one meal of it with beans per @GregnLety's Lety's recipe. It is Babs you should be worrying about - I am sure she has a great work of something in her (possibly not literature), and she feasts on it several times a day every day.
There is a lot of it, but it isn't monoculture - she has plenty of choices, but she really likes it. Honestly that is why I haven't dug it up before because she was enjoying it so much.
The others also eat it but not as obsessively as she does.
It has many properties including supposedly keeping down bugs - maybe she is self medicating. Maybe she is enjoying hallucinations. She hasn't shared her secrets with me.

Yes, it's a natural antiparasitic agent.

https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/what-is-wormwood

 

[BDutch]

I'm wondering if I can squeeze a couple of trees in as well.

Good for shade and our carbon footprint (CO2 reduction! ).

 

[BDutch]

"…

Tax. This is Stripe, one of Tina's chicks. Feels like twice the weight of the other two, and with a red comb emerging. Too early to tell, but looking a bit rooster-ish.
View attachment 3516674

Di you want to bet for a bottle of whiskey that stripe will turn into a rooster if he gets the chance?

 

[Shadrach]

Just LOOK at these lovelies having a good life! This makes me immensrly happy. I wish I could retire TODAY, and have my chickens run around all day long. For now, they did get 2 to 3 hours after I get home on weeknights and most of the day both weekend days. Precious these feather friends are. I love them so much.

I don't do much better than three hours being retired. A combination of having a lot to do and doing everything a lot slower than I used to just eats away the time.
Recently I've been trying for more time in the afternoon with some success.

 

[Shadrach]

I can't help but to wonder if the other people using the allotments have an honorific for you, "the chicken chap" perhaps.

I'm glad to hear Lima is still with you. Whatever she is expelling, better out than in.

I'll always be Bucket Boy when it comes to the chickens.
I think most of the other plot holders thing I'm rather strange but I've made a difference and everyone is happier, even C.

 

[Shadrach]

21C and sunny. Everyone except Fret got out for an hour or so on the allotments the rest of the time they spent in the allotment run. 4 hours today.

All this broody business is coming back to me. When I liften Fret out and dumped her in front of the food tray in the allotment run and went back to retrive any donations from the nest I found three blue eggs (Fret's) and one light brown egg (Ella's) and a sticky mess at the base of the nest. There should have been three of Ella's eggs there. It looks like Fret is eating Ella's eggs, but not her own. It seems Fret has no intention of hatching anyone else's eggs!
This is pretty normal in my experience although many report their hens will hatch any eggs and don't know which are theirs and which are another hens.
I've thought for a long time that hens know exactly whose eggs are whose. Some will tolerate another hens eggs, some won't, but they know.
So that was a nest clean out to start the afternoon. Fret having got the first three days over with (important for regular egg turning to prevent the embryo from sticking to the inside of the shell) and being a bit sticky underneath, went and had a proper bath. She also dumped this and one other so she's eating. That and the other are about right for a hen of her weight so I'm glad to have caught the events.

The rest going foraging.

Further progress with the shade box.

It looks a bit untidy but I need the weight of the pallet (minus a few planks) because of the wind. That's two layers of shade cloth (90%) with an air gap inbetween the top and bottom of the pallet. The will be more on both sides and the front, possible mesh on the top to prevent damage. The slope of the box needs to be increased a few degrees. The lower end faces South and the nettles and stuff on the outside of the fence help keep the air at the base cool. Shade cloth lets in water and hopefully, lets out warm air which rises, pulling cooler air in below. We shall see.

I spent a few minutes on the roost bar. They reluctantly made room for me.

Fret back on her now clean nest.

Roosting time. I'm still putting Henry on the ramp. I'm begining to think he enjoys it.
I'll be making a full cut out where you can see the holes at the top of the front wall of the coop and covering with weldmesh for more ventilation.

 

[notabitail]

I'm at a rental house right now. And next door, there are roosters! I wanted to cuddle that tiny bantam rooster in the photo. Cute little thing.
Oh, and a hen that is twice its size is terrified of Little Roo.
Count that as my tax.

 

[BDutch]

… have been three of Ella's eggs there. It looks like Fret is eating Ella's eggs, but not her own. It seems Fret has no intention of hatching anyone else's eggs!
This is pretty normal in my experience although many report their hens will hatch any eggs and don't know which are theirs and which are another hens.
I've thought for a long time that hens know exactly whose eggs are whose. Some will tolerate another hens eggs, some won't, but they know.

In my experience the broodies don’t give a damx as long as it has a bit of the looks and weight of an egg.

Good thing too because I bought hatching eggs. The eggs and chicks are excepted as their own. The broodies even love my rubber and chalk eggs just as much as the real ones.
Only after sitting two or 2½ weeks they might start tossing out one or two fake eggs. But certainly not all infertile eggs.

Ini mini decided a few days ago she is happy to sit on a brown rubber fake egg. And this time it’s not easy to break her.

This Vorwerk chick is way more curious than the others. Hearing something from outside it immediately comes running down and often goes outside in the run. Here it just came back in the coop area.

A late dry mealworm snack yesterday evening.

 

[Perris]

I found three blue eggs (Fret's) and one light brown egg (Ella's) and a sticky mess at the base of the nest. There should have been three of Ella's eggs there. It looks like Fret is eating Ella's eggs, but not her own. It seems Fret has no intention of hatching anyone else's eggs!
This is pretty normal in my experience although many report their hens will hatch any eggs

Thankfully that's not normal in my experience

don't know which are theirs and which are another hens.
I've thought for a long time that hens know exactly whose eggs are whose. Some will tolerate another hens eggs, some won't, but they know.

Early this year someone in the flock was probing the fake eggs I put in the nesting boxes to encourage the pullets to lay there and not elsewhere. The tester inflicted serious and extensive damage on the rubber egg, and on a clay one, but none on a golf ball (not for lack of trying I'm sure; they're just much tougher), and I worried about real eggs getting destroyed by this tester. So at least one bird in this flock takes a serious interest in who's laying what in the nestboxes, and doesn't stop at a mere visual inspection.

I removed the offending and damaged fake eggs, but left others, and they weren't tested (or at least damaged by any testing that occurred). Bizarre, but there it is. Since then, egg laying has been in full swing, and a week or so ago a single egg had a hole in the side, but I'm sure that was Eve's spur not a peck by whoever.

Can you frame an experiment to test your hunch Shad?

 

[Shadrach]

I tried the fake egg thing a couple of times. The hens threw them out or just ignored them.
A wry grin passes over my face when I read about putting golf balls and fake eggs in nests and then reading that the hen lays eggs in the nest where before she laid them in the coop or elsewhere.
Most of the pullets I've know start by llaying their eggs all over the place. It takes them a while to have the confidence to lay where the other hens lay. This is partly because the senior hens "discourage" the pullet from laying in "their" nest. With free rangers it's also partly I believe that their natural instinct is to lay their eggs in a hidden location away from other hens and of course the human keeper.
It takes a good rooster to pursuade a pullet to use a nest box. I've posted a lot of pictures of roosters trying to do exactly this.