Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Molpet]

Because they want to stay as one flock and you're trying to divide them into 2.

Exactly. Natural flocks are up to 30, then they start to split.

Exactly.


Can you move the smaller coop next to the bigger one? My 4 sit near each other, and there is no hard and fast pattern of who roosts where or with whom. They have friends they want to be with, and fall out occasionally, and ones they want to avoid etc.

You can force them to do what you want, as Molpet first did for breeding, but you can't make them like the groups you form.

Yeah I'm considering adding on to the coops that everyone wants to be in, They are just cattle panel hoop coops and I could add a wooden structure on the north end... I just don't have the energy. lol

 

[TropicalChickies]

Because they want to stay as one flock and you're trying to divide them into 2.

Exactly. Natural flocks are up to 30, then they start to split.

Exactly.


Can you move the smaller coop next to the bigger one? My 4 sit near each other, and there is no hard and fast pattern of who roosts where or with whom. They have friends they want to be with, and fall out occasionally, and ones they want to avoid etc.

You can force them to do what you want, as Molpet first did for breeding, but you can't make them like the groups you form.

I had no idea a natural chicken flock was 30! I thought it was more like 8 or 10, in a free range keep. A senior and maybe a junior male or two, the harem of maybe 5 or 6 hens, and chicks. I guess I'm very confused.

Neither of the coops are mobile. They are 80m apart. I understand there's advantages to mobile coops but it's not something I'm able to put resources into right now. The coops are only for sleeping at night. They can mix, or not, all day every day. Sometimes they mix, sometimes they don't.

If I let Tobias and Prima stay in the senior coop, and use the second coop just for broodies and juvies who get kicked out of the senior coop, eventually they will all defect to the senior coop so they can all be together. Eventually I'd like to have about 10-12 hens and 2 or even 3 roosters of different ages.

Given that I've currently got a 94% hatch rate for cockerels, this could take awhile...

But the current senior coop isn't big enough for the 15 chickens I'd like to have eventually. I guess we could add some additional roost bars under the big tarp covering the coop, but that's far from ideal.

Eventually some brave or independent or deposed chickens are going to have to use the second coop and stay there. I'm not building another coop so everyone can be together -- if that's what they want. We've got a huge El Niño system coming our way in two months and my biggest priority is making sure the structures we have are sturdy, reinforced and not in the way of trees that may fall.

The funny thing is, all of the laying hens use the junior coop to lay their eggs.... Not a single one puts her eggs in or near the senior coop. But they all go to sleep there.

I don't get it.

 

[TropicalChickies]

there is no hard and fast pattern of who roosts where or with whom. They have friends they want to be with, and fall out occasionally, and ones they want to avoid etc.

Well, that's encouraging at least. I guess I have to let the situation be fluid.

 

[TropicalChickies]

I just don't have the energy. l

I hear you! Geez Louise it's not like I don't have anything else to do.

 

[Perris]

I had no idea a natural chicken flock was 30

from 3 up to 30, according to Nicol Behavioural biology p.104 “unconstrained chickens are often seen associating in groups of between 3 and 30 individuals. Once group size exceeds around 100 individuals, chickens cannot distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar birds…"

 

[Shadrach]

The flock can go from too many to too few very quickly.

This is an undermentioned problem even for those who keep their chickens mainly confined, or just hens. Loose the top hen or rooster and/or the main tribe broody and one has to start thinking hard about how to keep the populations up to strength.
A broody and hatch per year per tribe is about minimum for a stable tribe of say four or five. But, the chances are there will still be males that won't fit in and of course the cockerel gangs to break up.
Even with some clutch size control it's possible to find four males out of a hatch of six.
In the right circles one can give away a male and female sibling, sometime it takes two females and a male to make the deal.

 

[Shadrach]

"Maybe because they're chickens...)

I'll go with that explanation.

 

[Shadrach]

Three hours today. I got wet morning and evenings.
It looks like my immune system has finally kicked Covid into touch. Not sure how much damage it's done on the way.I got a negative test result this evening.
With luck I believe I've managed through two weeks of two trips a day to the chickens on public transport and not passed the bug on. I have had to tell a couple of people to back off, and interestingly both said how grateful they were for me being considerate once they understood the reason which was rather a pleasant surprise.
It's get fitter for winter now.

Henry is finding his moult tiring. One can see it in his behaviour. What my presence does allow him to do is relax for a while. Here he is doing exactly that.

Tree huggers.The suspected male doesn't seem to have had problems transfering the roost bar skill to the coop, but the probable female is sleeping in the nest box she was hatched in. I don't think it's fear that's stopping her roosting. Fret very sensibly chose the free roostbar and positioned herself close to the nest box; good defensive position in a coop like this.

Out for spells between the showers.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good evening one and all!

Temperature is in the 80s.

Have a great day!

 

[MrsNorthie]

I'm really under-qualified to advise on this matter -- this is my first experience with multiple cockerels. 33 pullets is a whole lot more than my 5 hens & 1 pullet to 4 cockerels situation. I know there's a few keepers here who keep multiple roosters -- I think @Perris has 3 or 4 roosters and only 16 or so hens, but he has multiple coops. @Molpet keeps multiple roosters across 4 coops and all in one big poultry yard. @GregnLety has several roosters with separate housing arrangements and I think rotates their ranging time somehow. And @Shadrach relates that in the specific scenario of his Catalonia keeping circumstances the average tribe size was 4-8 hens with 1-2 roosters.

From all the reading and mental note taking I've done about this, the only conclusion seems to be that there is no conclusion. Everything depends on the keeping arrangements. And it appears that keeping roosters/cockerels in a more multigenerational situation (with senior and junior roosters respecting a hierarchy) is easier than keeping several the same age.

I still plan on keeping Lucio (10 months old) and Tobias (5 months old ) as his junior. We'll see but Tobias seems a natural "second lieutenant type. He knows he isn't a a fighter like Lucio and his short legs keep him from catching hens by force. So he uses treats. And sometimes a hen crouches for him.

Hopefully out of the 4 chicks here now, there's at least 1-2 pullets...

I just couldn't see any way that 4 mating cockerels and 6 females could work without more hens getting injured and hiding in the forest. And I'm not going to bring in a bunch of unknown females and go through quarantining and introductions just try to appease animals that likely won't do what I would hope for anyway. I want to keep allowing my tribe(s) to expand organically via broodies hatching chicks here.

If you don't my asking, I'm just curious, what is your keeping circumstance like?

We have 2 coops and a ginormous run that is about to be extended. We are too close to the road to fully free range. We have people up the road that are right on the road, and they free range I have seen several chickens splatted on the road. We aren't right on the road but we only have 6 acres and are close enough that it is a huge concern. So we have a run that gives them the feeling of ranging with some protective boundaries. The original 12 do not even use the full run space they have. With adding more, I want to double the run and have a 3rd coop.

Eventually, they will have 2-3 acres that they can safely roam. I want to plant grass and a chicken friendly herb garden and maybe some dwarf fruit trees in their run to give them a lot more options for foraging and fun. The 3 older boys are mostly working together, but there have been some minor skirmishes the last week or so, and I know that this is likely still hormonal puberty behaviour, that will hopefully subside when they fully mature.

I think they will be ok and I am worrying about nothing, but the puberty stage gets rough and now we have the bonus cockerels who are just going to start as the others are winding down.. Blue, as the dominant, has his pick and can be gentlemanly with the girls, but the other 2 tend to get grabby and I don't like any of them to get hurt. So far everything has been super minor, some feathers yanked out, some pecked combs and wattles, and for the most part they all hang close and forage together, the boys mostly standing guard.

Ideally, the economy will straighten out and we can sell this and buy a 20-50 acre bit of land where we can build a house that sits 4-5 acres back from the road. If not, we have been considering fencing off the property with a 10ft high fence, but the economy is so bad right now and the company that I work for, has been off-shoring a lot of jobs over the last 4 years, so I am sure that it is just a matter of time. I was hoping that we would be totally self-sufficient by that time, the economy has slowed our progress.