Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[RoyalChick]

Very interesting.
From that summary none of that really applied to my hen who died, except possible genetic susceptibility. They all eat the same feed which I wouldn't say is excessive from an energy standpoint, it is high in carbs I guess being grain based but it's wholegrain based so those carbs are balanced with a lot of fibre. They get meat meal daily plus meat scraps and dairy along with kitchen scraps. They have full access to a range of leafy green plants and pasture to forage on, plus bugs etc. They get lots of exercise and this hen in question was a tree sleeper, sleeping about 4 metres up. The corn portion of their diet is pretty minimal, they're lucky if they get 4 or 5 kernels each per day.
In saying all that I have a friend who got fatty liver syndrome and she was healthy weight, healthy diet at the time, just a genetic susceptibility in her case. She has to watch her carbohydrate intake.

Yup. Real life is rarely tidy. I am sure many of us know lifelong smokers who lived to a ripe old age as well as fitness fanatics who had heart attacks in their 50s.
It is all statistical not deterministic.
Same for chickens.

 

[ManueB]

My old hens and my leghorn hen lay the 'lamest' eggs

The two leghorns that arrived here in the middle of may, also lay eggs that have a lighter and less tasty yolk than the other hens. At first I attributed this to the fact that they had health issues, but they arrived with a pair of cross Marans/harco, and now these are laying eggs like the others but the leghorns are still laying pale yolks. They seem to forage as much as the others.
I have a clear preference for Chipie, my smallest bantam's eggs. The yolks are very orange and have a strong taste. We did a blind testing once with my partner, so it's not just sentimental.They are tiny though.

All my girls have been raised and live the same. The coop is an old 10'x12' horse stall with 1/2" hardware cloth over all openings. The auto door opens and closes with daylight into the barn alley 8'x50'. There is a door around the corner on the north end that is always open enough for the alpacas so push it open or the chickens to pass through. They have access to a fenced acre (which includes a pond about 50'x25'). For whatever reason, most of them wait for me to open the barn doors on the south side in the morning.

Feed: starter then grower then layer. Though now that I have Zeus (4ish (?) month old EE cockerel) I have switched back to grower. The girls have always had oyster shell available. In the morning the 20 of them share a 5 oz can of BOSS along with their commercial feed. They also get kitchen scraps. In the afternoon they get 5 oz of scratch with their commercial feed. They forage as much as they like all day long.

When dusk arrives they head back to the coop on their own for the night, I close it up and close the south barn door later.

The girls that I found dead without obvious cause were different breeds and different hatch years. All came from hatcheries as day olds.

Sounds like there’s not much you could improve ?
I only give sunflower seeds as a special treat to get them somewhere, or when I have to handle them. May I ask why you are giving it on a regular basis, just to give them something they like, or for the nutrients ?

Oh right, tax, crap! I have forgotten to pay my taxes for some time now. Foureira, a serama pulletView attachment 3625442

I find her stunning. Love her colours and pattern!

There is actually quite a good body of scientific work on fatty liver syndrome.
I can't remember why I looked into this and I won't have all the papers I read easily to hand but am linking a few. The reason it is well studied is partly that it is an economically significant disease for the large scale chicken operations, but also because it is a good model of human non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

All the findings below have been confirmed in multiple studies so are really not that controversial in the scientific community at this stage. Of course it all runs a bit counter to the BYC general viewpoint!

From memory (I didn't re-read them all just now) the main conclusions are:
- It is a disorder of carbohydrate metabolism
- Like all metabolic diseases it is complicated with multiple factors involved - so likely both genetics and diet as well as exercise (see below)
- Mortality of chickens who have Fatty Liver (abbreviated to FLKS for Fatty Liver Kidney Syndrome) was significantly reduced in the short term (broiler study) by providing animal fat in their diet!
- Hens that exercise (free ranging or even jumping up on perches) are much less likely to suffer FLKS than those confined and without exercise.
- Biotin (one of the B vitamins) is thought to play an important role - deficiency of Biotin is believed to be a factor in the disease and supplementing Biotin may help prevention.
[Parenthetical from me rather than from the studies directly: You have to love those B vitamins! Like all B vitamins it decays rapidly and therefore could well be somewhat lacking in commercial feeds particularly those that are stored badly or a bit elderly. Good dietary sources of Biotin are things like fish, liver, eggs, nuts and some seeds].

This is not from the papers I have linked but was a good summary from a university website (Texas I think):
Fatty liver syndrome is a result of excessive consumption of high-energy diets, regardless of the source, in birds whose exercise is restricted.

My personal takeaway from all the reading is:
- Let the birds range as much as possible
- Don't trust a commercial-only feed to provide enough B vitamins, so supplement with meat, fish, eggs, nuts - which is something Shad has been teaching us all for ages.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22039773/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/201268/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119323351
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/10/10/1911

Hope that is helpful for this community - I realize that the common wisdom is to trust the commercial feed to provide everything - but I think the whole B vitamin complex is sufficiently unstable that it is quite plausible that it decays during storage. And I think the whole connection to exercise and the coop/run keeping model is obvious.

I remember a bit about previous discussions but still found it very interesting.

Is vitamin B the reason why you supplement with brewer's yeast ?
(I was thinking to get some for moulting, but there is a very wide choice here for once aimed toward various animals, and a very wide range of price as well, which I don't really understand. How did you choose the stuff you get ?)

I’m not sure that trusting commercial food only for chickens is the common wisdom. It certainly isn't if you take in account the whole word and not just the US, and even in the US, I wonder if we are not mislead to think this by a few loud voices on BYC.

 

[Molpet]

Yup. Real life is rarely tidy. I am sure many of us know lifelong smokers who lived to a ripe old age as well as fitness fanatics who had heart attacks in their 50s.
It is all statistical not deterministic.
Same for chickens.

For people, they claim 80% of disease is from lifestyle and food choices.... So I assume the other 20 is genetics. Not sure where environmental fits. Because we could choose to move away from industry or highways.... maybe

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning one and all!

Temperature is in the 80s.

Have a great day!

 

[BDutch]

For people, they claim 80% of disease is from lifestyle and food choices.... So I assume the other 20 is genetics. Not sure where environmental fits. Because we could choose to move away from industry or highways.... maybe

Environment issues are a big problem in large parts of the Netherlands and other industrialised area’s in Europe.
Most people can’t move away from it. Cancers and Parkinsons disease are related to toxins.

Last week there was an article about PFAS toxins in eggs of BY chickens who live near (<10 km) from a Tefal/Teflon/PFAS plant. They found huge and dangerous amounts of PFAS in the eggs. Especially for children this is a mayor problem.

A month earlier authorities advised against swimming in a lake, nearby the Chemours -PFAS plant. A few years ago the authorities told people not to eat vegetables from their gardens.
The PFAS plant tries to cover up sll the wrong they are doing. Now there is proof that the staff were aware of the danger of the toxins. The local authorities got paid to shut up. People from the nearby villages are really pissed since they now its so dangerous and their kids were exposed to the toxins. They gathered to take action (lawsuit).

Spoiler: PFAS research article

Pollution
NRC examined the eggs of hobby chickens from the vicinity of Chemours chemical factory. In many cases they contain far too much PFAS. That is dangerous. "Eating these eggs is harmful to public health, especially for children."
Lucas BrouwersMark Lievisse Adriaanse
August 31, 2023
Reading time 12 minutes
Marco's chickens are laying well. The forty-year-old shares a chicken coop with his neighbors on the vacant lot behind his house. From his kitchen table, the born Sliedrechter looks out over the Teflon factory of Chemours in Dordrecht, on the other side of the Merwede. In 2018, the advice was given not to eat fruit and vegetables from your own garden in the immediate vicinity of the factory, due to contamination with PFAS. Since then, Marco's family no longer eats eggs as a precaution.

This spring, NRC collected more than forty eggs from nine private individuals and farmers in a radius of six kilometers around the Teflon factory and had them analyzed for PFAS by a laboratory at the VU University in Amsterdam. PFAS are a collection of chemicals commonly used by the chemical industry, which hardly break down and can be toxic. The substances lower the resistance and are carcinogenic in high concentrations.

According to international research, eating eggs from free-range chickens around chemical factories contributes to an unhealthy high concentration of PFAS in the blood of local residents. In the Netherlands, this is the first time that research has been carried out into PFAS contamination of eggs around a factory. Despite several signals about the danger of contaminated eggs, government agencies such as RIVM have not yet investigated this.

According to international research, eating eggs from free-range chickens around chemical factories contributes to an unhealthy high concentration of PFAS in the blood of local residents
Marco, who does not want his surname in the newspaper for privacy reasons, appears to be rightly concerned: the eggs of hobby chickens from the Sliedrecht and Alblasserwaard area often contain such high concentrations of PFAS that eating them can damage health. An important source of PFAS in Sliedrecht eggs is the Teflon factory Chemours in Dordrecht. It discharged large quantities of PFAS into the environment for decades, even though it knew that the substances were harmful, according to a Zembla broadcast in June. On Friday morning, the company must account for this in a hearing in the Provincial Council of South Holland.

Half an egg a week
Eggs from five of the nine locations contain too much PFAS. Those eggs exceed the European food standards for PFAS. Eating one egg a week could already be harmful to health in these places, according to research by NRC. The PFAS in the eggs from three of the nine sites can be traced directly to Chemours' PFAS emissions: they contain types of PFAS that the factory emitted in the past.


Also read 'Chemours wanted to settle for millions in PFAS case'
In Marco's garden, located on the dike and directly opposite the factory, the eggs were most heavily contaminated last spring. By eating half an egg a week, an adult man would already ingest more PFAS than is healthy according to the European guidelines. Children of four ingest 20 times more PFAS than is safe by eating one egg a week.

MOST PFAS IN EGG OF FREE-RANGE HOBBY CHICKEN NEAR CHEMOURS
Number of times PFAS advice is exceeded per egg per location…

So far about halfway the artiicle.

Open the article for the more info including tables / graphics and links to other info. Google translate can help you to translate.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/08/3...zwaar-vervuild-met-pfas-van-chemours-a4173207

Edited, typos

 

[no fly zone]

Environment issues are s big problem in large parts of the Netherlands and other industrialised area’s in Europe.
Most people can’t move away from it. Cancers and Parkinsons disease are related to toxins.

Last week there was an article about PFAS toxins in eggs of BY chickens who live near (<10 km) from a Tefal/PFAS plant. They found huge and dangerous amounts of PFAS in the eggs. Especially for children this is a mayor problem.

A month earlier authorities advised against swimming in a lake nearby the Chemours -PFAS plant and a few years ago the authorities told people not to eat plants from their gardens.
The plant tries to cover up sll the wrong they are doing. Now there is proof that the staff were aware of the danger of the toxins. The local authorities got paid to shut up. People from the nearby villages are really pissed since they now its so dangerous and their kids were expelled to the toxins. They gathered to take action (lawsuit).

Spoiler: PFAS research article

Pollution
NRC examined the eggs of hobby chickens from the vicinity of Chemours chemical factory. In many cases they contain far too much PFAS. That is dangerous. "Eating these eggs is harmful to public health, especially for children."
Lucas BrouwersMark Lievisse Adriaanse
August 31, 2023
Reading time 12 minutes
Marco's chickens are laying well. The forty-year-old shares a chicken coop with his neighbors on the vacant lot behind his house. From his kitchen table, the born Sliedrechter looks out over the Teflon factory of Chemours in Dordrecht, on the other side of the Merwede. In 2018, the advice was given not to eat fruit and vegetables from your own garden in the immediate vicinity of the factory, due to contamination with PFAS. Since then, Marco's family no longer eats eggs as a precaution.

This spring, NRC collected more than forty eggs from nine private individuals and farmers in a radius of six kilometers around the Teflon factory and had them analyzed for PFAS by a laboratory at the VU University in Amsterdam. PFAS are a collection of chemicals commonly used by the chemical industry, which hardly break down and can be toxic. The substances lower the resistance and are carcinogenic in high concentrations.

According to international research, eating eggs from free-range chickens around chemical factories contributes to an unhealthy high concentration of PFAS in the blood of local residents. In the Netherlands, this is the first time that research has been carried out into PFAS contamination of eggs around a factory. Despite several signals about the danger of contaminated eggs, government agencies such as RIVM have not yet investigated this.

According to international research, eating eggs from free-range chickens around chemical factories contributes to an unhealthy high concentration of PFAS in the blood of local residents
Marco, who does not want his surname in the newspaper for privacy reasons, appears to be rightly concerned: the eggs of hobby chickens from the Sliedrecht and Alblasserwaard area often contain such high concentrations of PFAS that eating them can damage health. An important source of PFAS in Sliedrecht eggs is the Teflon factory Chemours in Dordrecht. It discharged large quantities of PFAS into the environment for decades, even though it knew that the substances were harmful, according to a Zembla broadcast in June. On Friday morning, the company must account for this in a hearing in the Provincial Council of South Holland.

Half an egg a week
Eggs from five of the nine locations contain too much PFAS. Those eggs exceed the European food standards for PFAS. Eating one egg a week could already be harmful to health in these places, according to research by NRC. The PFAS in the eggs from three of the nine sites can be traced directly to Chemours' PFAS emissions: they contain types of PFAS that the factory emitted in the past.


Also read 'Chemours wanted to settle for millions in PFAS case'
In Marco's garden, located on the dike and directly opposite the factory, the eggs were most heavily contaminated last spring. By eating half an egg a week, an adult man would already ingest more PFAS than is healthy according to the European guidelines. Children of four ingest 20 times more PFAS than is safe by eating one egg a week.

MOST PFAS IN EGG OF FREE-RANGE HOBBY CHICKEN NEAR CHEMOURS
Number of times PFAS advice is exceeded per egg per location…

So far about halfway the artiicle.

Open the article for the more info including tables / graphics and links to other info. Google translate can help you to translate.

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2023/08/3...zwaar-vervuild-met-pfas-van-chemours-a4173207

Got to love how those who are supposed to look out for their constituents always seek instead to enlarge their bank accounts. The country is irrelevant.

 

[Shadrach]

That recipe looks delicious!

Lot of cooking for a few tomatoes.
It did taste pretty good thought I must admit.

 

[Shadrach]

Four hours today. Lovely day I should mention. Bright warm sunshine, while clouds scudding accross the sky with a cool breeze blowing from the West.
I'm hoping that I'll be spending a bit more time with the chickens over the next few days. Peopling is about done untill the end of the month when the birthday rounds strike. Eldest is going to be 40!

I saw Fret in full battle order today. A dove flew just a little to close trying to get some of the seeds I had thrown on the allotment plot for Fret and the chicks. They're getting hustled off the best stuff by Carbon and Henry now. I guess they're growing up and learning their place in the scheme of things. Fret got the Dove.She didn't kill it but I don't think it will try that manoeuver again. Fret a foot off the ground feet in front and head back for a strike looked pretty impressive. The dove sort of rolled away having been hit, dropped to the ground, ran a few steps and took off again.

"Is that edible?"

A very small snail in the grass.

I moved the grit and calcium bag again. Slaters! (wood lice)

Had to disturb this little chap. It had made it's web with the top end attached to the lid of the feed bin. I had the lid open a couple of hours earlier.

 

[Sally PB]

Fret, indeed!

 

[no fly zone]

Yup. Real life is rarely tidy. I am sure many of us know lifelong smokers who lived to a ripe old age as well as fitness fanatics who had heart attacks in their 50s.
It is all statistical not deterministic.
Same for chickens.

Skeksis was pretty damn healthy for 4 yrs, and then the EYP got her.