Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[lightm]

I hope @no fly zone is doing OK with skeksis gone and moving.

 

[lightm]

I was away from home for more than a month, and husband doesn't do gardening

So chickens are enjoying it today. But with Shad's arrangement and others comments, I simply wonder if I need to have a garden fence at all.

 

[TropicalChickies]

I've got one trying to be broody.

When I was picking up my eggs she was setting on 5.

When I reached under her to take an egg she pecked me.

I don't have a rooster.

I dealt with that for a couple years with no rooster and one hen in particular going broody every 3 months like clockwork. Her name was Cheri and eventually I got her some fertile eggs to hatch. One of the chicks hatched is now my rooster, Lucio.

She was a very tough hen. She didn't peck me, but would fight with her feet and wings, like a rooster, when I tried to put her in a broody cage. She would hurt and even bloody herself trying to get out. Her determination was something else.

Eventually I gave up and would let her sit the three weeks on one unfertile egg I would rotate out every week so it wouldn't go bad and explode and soil her with bacteria.

She died last March. But in her last months she finally got to hatch and mother chicks.

Having a rooster doesn't make it easier, just different, knowing that the eggs will be fertile. I need to keep the population manageable, but like @Perris, now I have more hens that go broody more often. Who do I let sit and hatch? And when and why? I'm finding that learning to manage it is yet another part of the curve.

 

[TropicalChickies]

I was thinking about @noflyzone the other day too...

I hope @no fly zone is doing OK with skeksis gone and moving.

 

[lightm]

Mine all do that. When it is raining they all line up under the hardware cloth to catch the drips.
Same with snow.
It must taste better when dripping off wire!

Same.

Getting water from dripping wire does not hurt their back.

 

[RoyalChick]

I was thinking about @noflyzone the other day too...

Me too. He must be somewhere here in New Jersey now like me. I know he was hating the idea but I hoped to welcome him nonetheless.
He must be bereft without his beloved Skeksis for comfort.

 

[Iluveggers]

I was away from home for more than a month, and husband doesn't do gardening

So chickens are enjoying it today. But with Shad's arrangement and others comments, I simply wonder if I need to have a garden fence at all.

View attachment 3586055View attachment 3586056View attachment 3586057

I tried a little experiment yesterday. I have a couple volunteer tomato plants growing between the coop and the house, along with some weeds and grass that haven’t been mowed in awhile. I let the chickens into that area yesterday (the run opens to the other side), just to see what would happen. Only three of them came to that side, and within 5 minutes the tomatoes were trampled (they were about 2 feet high). They didn’t eat the tomatoes, but they dug around the bottom and knocked them down. Usually I close the vegetable garden off during growing season and then open it to them in the fall, but thought maybe I could let them in earlier. I try to grow all of our vegetable produce from June-September so we don’t have to buy any, so I think I’ll keep the chickens out for now. I can’t risk losing my family’s food source.

Once I have harvested mostly everything except the winter squash and some greens I can put a small fence around, I will let them back in to that area and let them glean and work on pest control.

 

[GregnLety]

Rice boiled water with a bit sugar was nice dessert for me as a kid. Yum Yum Yum.

That was the only way I had eaten rice until I grew up and joined the army. They was serving plain rice with lunch and dinner and I was thinking WTH? LOL

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Awe, the poor baby! She is really just feeling the call to motherhood.

She doesn't have a chance since there is no rooster.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning one and all!

Today is hubby's 77th birthday.

Temperature is in the 80s.

Have a great day!