Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Love that third picture of Henry picking his way down the row.

They've been pretty good on my plot. I think I've lost one onion because one of them broke the stem but otherwise the damage has been minimal. Henry is the most carefull but given his weight if he does tread on something it will probably break. Fret is prone to digging dust bath hole between the rows, something I discourage.
Apparently it's become a bit of a talking point among the other plot holders who it seems expected my plot to be turned into a desert very quickly. Oneother person has used my chicken shit and compost mix on sections of their plot and the difference in growth is noticable. Nothing like some hard evidence to help convert the nay sayers.
Of course one has to consider what one has planted. Some crops will need protection but these crops should be protected with or without the chickens.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm hoping Dusty (my little black frizzle) goes broody again. She's young (11 mos) but I think she'll be a good mom. This is my first time setting Lucio-fertilized eggs aside for a hatch. Given his age, they should all be fertile. The ones I've been cracking to eat all have been (white spots in all the yolks from all four layers).

View attachment 3583322
Here I've got 2 of Dusty's, one from Rusty, and one from Tina. I'm not saving Patucha's because there's already four little Patuchas running around. Storing on their sides inside the clay kiln, which is the most reliably cool place I've got.

Btw @Perris , since switching to homemade feed six weeks ago, the broodies have all come back to lay and everyone's eggs seem fine. Im getting 2-3 eggs per day from the 4 layers, good strong shells, thick albumen, rich yolks. I'm not particularly production minded and keep hens who don't lay for friendship, but tasty eggs are nice...
View attachment 3583330

My Butchie. Doesn't lay, but pays her rent in sweetness.
View attachment 3583331

Do please keep us informed as to how the diet change works out. I would love to make the change but the circumstances are just not right at the moment. The allotment chickens get a wide variety of foodstuffs which is great but I'm still feeding commercial feed and it still makes up the bulk of their diet. In fact, since feeding the mash they are eating more of the commercial feed than they were the pellets. My rough estimate is 20% more which is quite a lot.

 

[Shadrach]

I've made some progress on this today. My provisional but definitely shaky grasp of this issue is that females might be able to tell (by smell) if a male has a very similar genetic makeup to themselves in one specific area called the major histocompatibility complex (heavy wikipedia page for the seriously interested here, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_histocompatibility_complex [with some interesting observations on the effect of oral contraceptives on the functionality of this possible mechanism in humans]), and that they favour diversity over similarity, which might help specifically with disease resistance in the offspring. Smell and phenotype are both sidestepped by artificial insemination, and so is the favouritism, the Proc Royal Soc paper finds, suggesting perhaps an active role for the hen's sensibilities.

I'll have a read at some point.

 

[RoyalChick]

They've been pretty good on my plot. I think I've lost one onion because one of them broke the stem but otherwise the damage has been minimal. Henry is the most carefull but given his weight if he does tread on something it will probably break. Fret is prone to digging dust bath hole between the rows, something I discourage.
Apparently it's become a bit of a talking point among the other plot holders who it seems expected my plot to be turned into a desert very quickly. Oneother person has used my chicken shit and compost mix on sections of their plot and the difference in growth is noticable. Nothing like some hard evidence to help convert the nay sayers.
Of course one has to consider what one has planted. Some crops will need protection but these crops should be protected with or without the chickens.

Oh indeed - I am a gardener at heart (though my imagination is bigger than my ability to execute at times) - and I can tell you that chicken shit is the best shit there is.
Horse manure is not great because they don't break up the weed seeds so you are really just growing a weed patch unless you really rot it down very thoroughly.
Sheep droppings are good too.
My comment though was actually more an aesthetic one - I really like the picture - huge henry tiptoeing between your rows.
Just lovely!

 

[Shadrach]

Comment.
"Chickens are so dumb" the man said as he tucked into his third hot dog complete with synthetic mustard, relish, all stuffed into a sweet soft white roll.
"I caught one of mine eating sheep shit pellets."

 

[TropicalChickies]

Do please keep us informed as to how the diet change works out. I would love to make the change but the circumstances are just not right at the moment. The allotment chickens get a wide variety of foodstuffs which is great but I'm still feeding commercial feed and it still makes up the bulk of their diet. In fact, since feeding the mash they are eating more of the commercial feed than they were the pellets. My rough estimate is 20% more which is quite a lot.

Sure, they seem to be doing well on it, but I'm watching them closely. They eat it like crazy. In less than ten minutes, they've scarfed their ration, and I'm dishing out ample portions by weight. Poops are mostly ok, but it's hard to use that as a measure because they get into berries and fruits at times. And it's been hot. But still, mostly solid poop and normal cecal poop. No one has gotten sick or lame, all of their feathers look good (except poor Dusty whose frizzle feathers break easily from mating). But she has new feathers trying to grow in -- another reason I'm hoping she broods to give her some time away from Lucio's lovin'.

The 3 year old hen Butchie has some blockage in her body and slow digestion and cannot tolerate any commercial feed. But she has been eating controlled amounts of the homemade feed for two months without much problem. It actually seems to be helping to "deflate" the gassy distension in her abdomen she gets from commercial feed. My theory is that she has an inflammatory response to soy (many people and animals do). There's corn, oats, barley, flax, and peas/pea flour in my homemade feed, but no soy. Soy was a main ingredient in the commercial crumble I was giving them.

 

[TropicalChickies]

Comment.
"Chickens are so dumb" the man said as he tucked into his third hot dog complete with synthetic mustard, relish, all stuffed into a sweet soft white roll.
"I caught one of mine eating sheep shit pellets."

I lived in Ireland for a year. 1995. On the west coast, county Dingle. Then I hitchhiked my way up the western coast, getting odd jobs along the way. In County Donegal, way up on Malin Head in a village called Muff, I herded sheep. Well, the border collies herded sheep while I watched and closed the gate when they were all in. Anyway, saw a lot of sheep shit. Sheep shit is pretty much grass, nettles, vetch, wildflowers etc ground up with whatever bugs were on the plants when the sheep ate it.

Sounds to me like the chickens are pretty smart for letting the sheep do the harvest and convenient delivery for them.

 

[TropicalChickies]

In fact, since feeding the mash they are eating more of the commercial feed than they were the pellets. My rough estimate is 20% more which is quite a lot.

When I bought commercial feed, I recall seeing the word "humedad" (humidity) on the ingredient label when I asked to see the big bag at the supply store. I take it this means the moisture content in the feed. I think it was 14%. I have a pretty good memory. I was buying crumble. It seems logical to me that pellets would retain the highest moisture content, then crumble, and mash would have the least moisture. As a farmer who grows and processes cacao beans, I know that the whole dried beans retain more moisture than when I crush the beans to "nibs." 1lb of whole beans crushed to nibs will weigh less than 1lb after two weeks of storage, whereas 1lb of stored beans stays 1 lb.

Anyway, point is that your allotment chickens likely aren't eating more actual food mass in the mash. It's just more dehydrated than the pellets which have more moisture by weight.

 

[fuzzi]

Hmmm... Well, yes, but -- and I really don't mean to offend or generalize about the nuances of anyone's particular belief system -- but there is this famous bit in the Bible here:
“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

So it seems to me -- without commenting right now on whether or not that particular belief -- along with others like reductive rationalism-- may have led to anything in particular (https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc...ion-event-will-be-worse-than-first-predicted/)

But that it's very possible for one to believe that human creatures have the same beginnings as other creatures, but that the entity responsible for those beginnings also granted humans dominion over the others.

The meaning of dominion being, "supreme authority; the power of governing and controlling." Having dominion implies superiority over the "lower" creatures. And if one believes in dominion, that's where the basis for comparison ends.

There's another passage in the Bible where it says "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast..." (Proverbs 12:10a)

We take care of our beasts, the animals we have been given, whether they're considered food or friends, or both.

My "beasts"...

Rahab is growing a big girl comb!

Martha and the boys:

 

[TropicalChickies]

There's another passage in the Bible where it says "A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast..." (Proverbs 12:10a)

We take care of our beasts, the animals we have been given, whether they're considered food or friends, or both.

My "beasts"...

Rahab is growing a big girl comb!
View attachment 3583719

Martha and the boys:
View attachment 3583720

I come from a very tribal family, New Jersey Italian-Americans, ha. We all lived on one block -- parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins -- and holiday dinners were like fifty people crammed into one house, a genuine multi-generational bedlam. Like the movie "Goodfellas" without the mobster part (except for that one cousin who was always in Florida). So of course I went to Catholic school. And lemme tell ya, nothing will turn an oddball kid into a black sheep agnostic like nuns grilling you on the ten commandments when you're six years old or a priest hearing you "confess" your "sins" when you're only seven.

At seventeen I escaped the compound. Went to college on scholarship and studied history. In a medieval studies course I ended up learning about the history of the Bible of all things. It's an interesting book. Should it be taken literally? No. Context and interpretation are everything.

Totally off-chicken incendiary topic tax. Here's an old photo of Butchie as a pullet, who -- not being as stylish as Shad's Treacle -- made her first laying nest on my gumboots.