Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[TropicalChickies]

Stupid news: Katrientje is broody and very persistent (annoying). Told her she wont get fertilised eggs cause there are too many chicks as it is.

My little chirapa (frizzle) Dusty won't give up now. She's only 9 months old and only laid two clutches of eggs so far. This is her second broody spell. She snapped out of the first one after only one day on a hard wood floor, but this time she's really determined. She's not sitting on anything and I've destroyed her "nest" twice, she keeps going back to the same spot, which is in a really bad spot -- our workshop -- with sharp tools around.

I should have jotted down the day she went broody, but mistakenly figured she would have abandoned the idea by now. I've been swamped with things to do and can't recall for the life of me when she started. Now she's barely eating and when I take her off the nest to eat, she just sits there in a trance and then cackles like a demon and runs back to the nest. I have to syringe her water or she won't get any. Yesterday I put her in the dust bath under a big basket and she just sat there, not bathing. I don't have a freezer so putting an ice pack under her is out.

The chicks and mums are in the coop now so next time I swear I can give her some eggs and space in the broody wing (which I'm improving dramatically).

Please if anyone has some helpful advice, I'm all ears.

Wannabe Teen Mom, Dusty

 

[TropicalChickies]

Victoria showing off her new Cowgirl skirt. She doesn't like talk about her weight but between me and you it's over 18lbs.
View attachment 3556407

They call birds that look like here "calditas" -- which means a thick slow-simmered soup -- almost stew. Might as well get right to point I guess

 

[TropicalChickies]

As is almost always the case the keeping circumstances are a major consideration. In Catalonia for example a chicken with one leg wouldn't be able to keep up with their tribe and would, in a fairly short time, be picked off by a predator. Is it better knowing this to euthanize the bird or let the predators do a not so quick job later?
I've found birds so badly injured but still alive, just, that I knew there was no way they would ever recover to a state where they could free range. I can't see having a bird contained in a coop and run while their friends and family wander a satisfactory solution.
Broken legs were one of things my vet Gloria in Catalonia would not try to fix. In her opinion the suffering and often doubtfull outcome made an attempt an act of cruelty. I had one hen hit by a Goshawk. She took a full weight strike to her back. I didn't appreciate the severity of her internal injuries and kept her alive for eleven days after which she died. I still regret the suffering I put her through when the kindest thing to do was give her a swift death.
On the other hand I've had chickens with horrendous looking flesh injuries who one wouldn't think would survive another hour, let alone heal and make a full recovery.
Sickness is always difficult, especially if one isn't sure what the sickness is. Again I've had chickens looking as if they were at deaths door one day and a few days later show marked signs of recovery.
I've had paralyzed hens who took weeks to recover with a lot of supportive care that many people would have killed believing they were doing the right thing.

I can't find it in me to condem people who euthanzie their birds for their own sake or the birds. I've found sick and injured chickens to be extremely stressfull at times, more so than the stress situations that are in the top ten list for humans.

I've seen more chickens die than the total number of chickens the regular contributors of this thread keep combined. At my uncles farm we used to kill a couple of hundred in a day. I was young and they were killed for eating and I helped. I would still kill chickens I've raised to eat and have done so in the past.

These last two years alone I've had a dozen or more birds die. That's twice the number of many peoples tribes.

I can care for Ex Battery hens because of the experiences mentioned above and still make emotional attachments to/with them. For many people the combined horror of knowing the lives Ex Battery hens had and finding they die just when one thinks they are begining to enjoy their horribly short lives is just too heart rending to manage.
This is in part why I believe caring for Ex Battery hens is what I should be doing, because I can.
I would love a tribe of Light Sussex or Dorkings but they don't need what I hope I can give to the Ex Battery hens day after day, arrivals after arrivals and death after death.

Hmm, all good points. I had to think on this for a bit. Perhaps leg injury wasn't the best example. It's just one (in my limited experience) that I've seen a chicken recover from a hopeless looking situation with some extra care. My Butchie was a lone hatchling and when her mother abruptly stopped mothering her, she was lost. She kept trying to run after mama and very badly twisted and sprained her leg in the process. (It's noticeable in the photos I post of her that one foot points out to the side.)

She couldn't walk at all and just laid on her side all day, whimpering. I splinted the leg with a popsicle stick and put an elastic to hold it in place and gave her tiny amounts of baby aspirin. It took three weeks to start to heal. But she did. A friend of mine in the States has a hen whose leg was crushed somehow, she had it amputated and the hen has somehow managed to free range while avoiding the foxes and racoons common there for a few years now.

I guess we can never really know as keepers who will bounce back or why some do and some don't. The judgement call will never be a cut and dry decision.

As far as euthanizing a bird goes, I'm not judging the person or the action, and didn't mean to sound like I was. In some ways, my situation is quite fortunate and makes it easier to both free range and tend to my chickens when they need supportive care. We have very few predators as an unfortunate result of deforestation-- there should be jaguars here!. I work "from home" and while life is far from leisurely here I do have the option to pause what I'm doing to take care of an animal. I have no children to pester me or take priority over my animals. So I get that it's easier for someone in my situation to be willing to go the extra mile for a chicken.

It is horribly stressful, as I'm sure so many people on this thread can relate. When Cleo fell ill, I was on vigil for three days and sleepless nights. I'm pretty sure my partner wishes I was more detached from them. It takes a toll on me -- and therefore on him. It's very hard to handle and for someone with children, a full time job, and a perhaps healthier desire not to suffer along with an ailing animal, I certainly wouldn't expect or require it in order to hold someone in regard.

Reflecting on this, I found that it's not the action of euthanizing the bird, for whatever reason, but the underlying hypocrisy in using the "it's more humane" part as a fallback. Indeed, sometimes it is. But if someone needs to put an animal down because they are too busy or it stresses them too much to try or watch over a death, then I feel like they could just be honest about that and say it.

Why does it irk me? I also had to ask myself. Most of the time, I couldn't care less what my fellow humans do; it's out of my control. But in this case I believe that to blind oneself to one's real motives and fall back on a just-sounding platitude makes it all the easier to let it slide when it matters on a bigger scale.

Like not even blinking when your government tells you, "We have to invade this country to 'export democracy' or 'liberate the people" or some such hooey when it's perfectly obvious the motive is something material like oil or protecting a political ally. Or when ten armed police officers murder an unarmed teenager "in self defense." Or when a government persecutes journalists who publish their dirty secrets "in the name of national security."

It's all such hypocritical smokescreening, and maybe this seems like a stretch of the imagination, but to me the ability to be hoodwinked starts with the individual hoodwinking him or herself.

Tax. Not a great picture, and blurry because she's always in motion, but here's the newest pullet, Frida, curious about Dusty sitting there in the workshop. She's named after Frida Kahlo because she has a unibrow and bit of moustache.

 

[TropicalChickies]

This is in part why I believe caring for Ex Battery hens is what I should be doing, because I can.
I would love a tribe of Light Sussex or Dorkings but they don't need what I hope I can give to the Ex Battery hens day after day, arrivals after arrivals and death after death.

And so shines a good deed in a weary world.

--Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory original with Gene Wilder)

 

[BDutch]

My little chirapa (frizzle) Dusty won't give up now. She's only 9 months old and only laid two clutches of eggs so far. This is her second broody spell. She snapped out of the first one after only one day on a hard wood floor, but this time she's really determined. She's not sitting on anything and I've destroyed her "nest" twice, she keeps going back to the same spot, which is in a really bad spot -- our workshop -- with sharp tools around.

I should have jotted down the day she went broody, but mistakenly figured she would have abandoned the idea by now. I've been swamped with things to do and can't recall for the life of me when she started. Now she's barely eating and when I take her off the nest to eat, she just sits there in a trance and then cackles like a demon and runs back to the nest. I have to syringe her water or she won't get any. Yesterday I put her in the dust bath under a big basket and she just sat there, not bathing. I don't have a freezer so putting an ice pack under her is out.

The chicks and mums are in the coop now so next time I swear I can give her some eggs and space in the broody wing (which I'm improving dramatically).

Please if anyone has some helpful advice, I'm all ears.
View attachment 3557369
Wannabe Teen Mom, Dusty

When I have an unwanted broody I always make sure she doesn’t spend the night on the nestbox.
Because the chicks sleep there now I cant close the small coop with the nest-boxes. The solution I found is to lock Katrientje out of the whole coop area. For two nights I locked her up in the second run in the evening. So she has to find a spot to sleep in there. Its 6m2 and has an alternative nestbox so nothing to complain about the space. She isn’t interested in this nestbox because its not the nestbox of her preference.

I open the gate to the main run again after dark. By then she sleeps on a piece of an outdoor table.
(Here with chicks)

When I came home from work just now, she and Janice both came of the nest by themselves, to free range with the others.
I do hope its almost over now. But I’m afraid Janice is getting broody now. Because she wants return inside and looks quite nervous. (She was the first to quit babysitting).

 

[no fly zone]

Got the report on Skeksis today. The bacteria responsible was E. Coli. They also called yesterday to say her meds were ready.

 

[TropicalChickies]

When I have an unwanted broody I always make sure she doesn’t spend the night on the nestbox.
Because the chicks sleep there now I cant close the small coop with the nest-boxes. The solution I found is to lock Katrientje out of the whole coop area. For two nights I locked her up in the second run in the evening. So she has to find a spot to sleep in there. Its 6m2 and has an alternative nestbox so nothing to complain about the space. She isn’t interested in this nestbox because its not the nestbox of her preference.

I open the gate to the main run again after dark. By then she sleeps on a piece of an outdoor table.
(Here with chicks)
View attachment 3557468

When I came home from work just now, she and Janice both came of the nest by themselves, to free range with the others.
I do hope its almost over now. But I’m afraid Janice is getting broody now. Because she wants return inside and looks quite nervous. (She was the first to quit babysitting).

Ok, since Dusty isn't nesting in or around the coop, I'm going to take her over to the coop after dark and put her there. Hopefully sleeping in the company of the other chickens will snap her out of this. I'm sure it will stress her but she's already getting stressed from not eating or drinking enough and sitting on nothing.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Got the report on Skeksis today. The bacteria responsible was E. Coli. They also called yesterday to say her meds were ready.

Don't feel badly. E. Coli generally responds to broad spectrum antibiotics like you were giving her. Since the broad spectrum didn't help, it's likely she has a very resistant strain that may or -more likely -- may not have responded to another medication. When it comes to antibiotic resistant bacterias, even the best doctors are just trying different meds and hoping for the best. You did everything you could.

 

[no fly zone]

Don't feel badly. E. Coli generally responds to broad spectrum antibiotics like you were giving her. Since the broad spectrum didn't help, it's likely she has a very resistant strain that may or -more likely -- may not have responded to another medication. When it comes to antibiotic resistant bacterias, even the best doctors are just trying different meds and hoping for the best. You did everything you could.

It doesn't make it any less painful though. She was a very unique and special chicken.

 

[Nomadicus]

They call birds that look like here "calditas" -- which means a thick slow-simmered soup -- almost stew. Might as well get right to point I guess

I've got 2-3 of those big girls earmarked for dumplings due to weak legs. Most are strong and fit and lay good eggs that will get hatched. It's a work in progress.