Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[RoyalChick]

I'll try and get a picture so you can see why I think she's unwell.

Thank you. I am just trying to improve my understanding of chicken health so I can help my Princesses. With your and @micstrachan's help I have got reasonably proficient at recognizing and dealing with crop issues. Giving pills and massaging crops are both things I am now reasonably confident in doing now, but I am still not very confident in spotting ill health early.

 

[Windrider]

Merry Christmas everyone!

Merry Christmas to you too!

'Tis the season and here's a Madonna and Child for our Ex Batts and other feathered friends.

 

[Shadrach]

Here is another study that might be of interest:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/09/210902124929.htm

Good find. Interesting that they think they might be able to sort this out with delaying the start of the egg cycle.

 

[Shadrach]

I thought battery cage egg production was banned in 2012 across the EU?

They just decided to call a cage something else in many cases.

 

[Shadrach]

I have a question about broody hens. I hope it's ok to ask it here Shad. Let me know if I'm to pay tax.

Is a broody hen's belly warmer than a hen who isn't broody?

Anything chicken related is fine and yes there is a rise in temperature but I can't remember how much.

 

[Shadrach]

Interesting. I wish they said what breed were the 4000 or so hens in the study. I would guess leghorns, because they are very small for the size egg they lay, as opposed to brown egg layers, which tend to be somewhat larger.

The article and research didn't address it, but I wonder if another factor in the keel bone fractures is the tremendous amount of calcium needed for that many eggs per year. While it is a matter of course to provide oyster shell and layer feed with calcium, that is still a huge amount of calcium cycling through a hen's body for 300+ eggs per year, as opposed to RJF's couple dozen. I have not seen anyone on BYC address whether this is a problem for bone health long term. Or maybe I just don't know enough about chickens and this has been addressed and is one of the reasons for production breeds' reproductive issues?

It has been skirted around. Calcium depeletion leading to osteoporosis was a common problem in the egg industry. Now there is a better understanding of how much calcium a laying hen needs. Hens store calcium in their bones, maily the bones in their legs. If my memory serves me they have three types of bones, one is solid, one is pneumatic and the other type is where calcium is stored. A hen will draw on her calcium deposits to make an egg in preference to suppllying the calcium to her bones.

 

[Shadrach]

Thank you. I am just trying to improve my understanding of chicken health so I can help my Princesses. With your and @micstrachan's help I have got reasonably proficient at recognizing and dealing with crop issues. Giving pills and massaging crops are both things I am now reasonably confident in doing now, but I am still not very confident in spotting ill health early.

Well, she looked okay today. But, I'm seeing a lot of this very sick looking one day and better the next. I'm tempted to think that this may be a feature of certain types of cancer. Something similar has been reported in humans.
I will try not to forget and get a picture of the next one with the particular posture that worries me.

 

[Shadrach]

This is one sign of imminent problems. The shell is very thin. Thin shells are not something I'm seeing throughout. I think this is one of Slide's.
Golden Comets seem to be so badly bred that their life span is even shorter than the RSLs.

 

[Windrider]

But even if there is understanding about how much calcium a laying hen needs, it seems like their physiology would not be adapted to processing that much calcium over their lifetime. What I am trying to say is that an animal like a male elk, which grows massive antlers every year and uses a ferocious amount of calcium to do so, is physiologically adapted to do so. Even giving a hen the amount of calcium she needs to lay without drawing from her bones, is she really adapted to processing that amount of calcium for her entire lifetime, coming from a species that doesn't lay that many eggs?

 

[Shadrach]

There is no escaping the fact that these chickens look and act completely differently when allowed onto a large area of rough ground. In the coop run they look like battery chickens. Once outside everything changes. They look much more like what I've come to learn happy healthy chickens look like. There is no way in the world that anyone will ever persuade me that keeping chickens in a run is humane.