Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[MrsNorthie]

I don't think I've ever eaten it.

The Hairy Bikers have a recipe, https://www.hairybikers.com/recipes/view/homity-pie. We do a lot of similar dishes with left-overs. (bubble and squeak is a favourite!)

 

[L-plate chicken mum]

The Hairy Bikers have a recipe, https://www.hairybikers.com/recipes/view/homity-pie. We do a lot of similar dishes with left-overs. (bubble and squeak is a favourite!)

A shame when the good guys go too early
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68433675

 

[MrsNorthie]

A shame when the good guys go too early
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68433675

Oh wow! Way too early! :-(

 

[fluffycrow]

Small rant. I hear quite often people saying that you need to place new eggs under a broody when she commits to sitting, because the embryos in the old eggs she periodically sat on will have died. If that were the case, wouldn't that mean that every chicken left to make a nest and hatch chicks on her own accord would be unsuccessful. Unless of course, a female doing a few "test runs" for a few days before committing to brooding is not the status quo; that I do not know. Maybe I should not be talking unless I knew the answer to the above, but seems to me like we can't trust chickens to sort out their natural behaviours anymore. Tax for the rant, and for the randomnes (and for possibly being wrong). Picture from today, the grown chicks of a hen who didn't receive any kind of assistance from me while brooding, and prepping her nest

 

[Shadrach]

More grey, chilly and damp. We got a couple of hours out on the allotments.
I watched Henry do another get Dig off a hen dash; Mow this time about twelve metres away (about forty feet).I know I've mentioned this before, but he is very quick for a large rooster.

Dig. Hmmmm, I may have made an error or a few. We've had this problem of Dig trying to mate the hens once they've gone to roost. Once Henry gets on his perch he is relctant to get off. Usually he roosts head to wall and that means he's got to turn around on the roost bar. The bar is a bit narrow for mid sized chickens so it's a balancing act for Henry when he turns around. More recently I've heard Henry get off his perch and attack Dig. All in all it's a bit chaotic at roosting time. I decided to see what happend if I let Dig go into the coop, close the pop and extricate Dig, sit him in my hand and give him an inspection and, give him a groom then put him on a roost bar through the human door at the back of the coop.

The other problem was/is if I put my hand in the coop near Dig he pecks at it. I get a few bruises and the occasional bleeding, nothing to worry about. As soon as I pick him up he stops. When I first started extricating him from the coop he wasn't very impressed, particulary because I have to take him out in a body grab (no, not a body bag ) or I got pecked at even more.

He's taken to standing at the coop window now waiting for me to come round. He's mostly stopped pecking me and the past couple of evenings he's stood still on my lap unrestrained as I pick the dripped blood clots off ears and feathers and around his eyes.

I usually sit outside the coop for a while after they're shut in watching the seagulls leave the river Avon and fly North West to roost. It's been a lot quieter in the coop recently. I hear the occasional roost shuffling protests but not the hens shouting GTFO! and Henry off his perch.

 

[fuzzi]

More grey, chilly and damp. We got a couple of hours out on the allotments.
I watched Henry do another get Dig off a hen dash; Mow this time about twelve metres away (about forty feet).I know I've mentioned this before, but he is very quick for a large rooster.

Dig. Hmmmm, I may have made an error or a few. We've had this problem of Dig trying to mate the hens once they've gone to roost. Once Henry gets on his perch he is relctant to get off. Usually he roosts head to wall and that means he's got to turn around on the roost bar. The bar is a bit narrow for mid sized chickens so it's a balancing act for Henry when he turns around. More recently I've heard Henry get off his perch and attack Dig. All in all it's a bit chaotic at roosting time. I decided to see what happend if I let Dig go into the coop, close the pop and extricate Dig, sit him in my hand and give him an inspection and, give him a groom then put him on a roost bar through the human door at the back of the coop.

The other problem was/is if I put my hand in the coop near Dig he pecks at it. I get a few bruises and the occasional bleeding, nothing to worry about. As soon as I pick him up he stops. When I first started extricating him from the coop he wasn't very impressed, particulary because I have to take him out in a body grab (no, not a body bag ) or I got pecked at even more.

He's taken to standing at the coop window now waiting for me to come round. He's mostly stopped pecking me and the past couple of evenings he's stood still on my lap unrestrained as I pick the dripped blood clots off ears and feathers and around his eyes.

I usually sit outside the coop for a while after they're shut in watching the seagulls leave the river Avon and fly North West to roost. It's been a lot quieter in the coop recently. I hear the occasional roost shuffling protests but not the hens shouting GTFO! and Henry off his perch.

View attachment 3760579View attachment 3760580View attachment 3760581View attachment 3760582

I like how you're handling Dig.

 

[BDutch]

I hear quite often people saying that you need to place new eggs under a broody when she commits to sitting, because the embryos in the old eggs she periodically sat on will have died. If that were the case, wouldn't that mean that every chicken left to make a nest and hatch chicks on her own accord would be unsuccessful.

I have no experience with a broody hatching on her own or in a secret nest. Most of the time it wouldn't be successful anyway because I only had a few cockerels as an exception.

But I was interested in this subject and read about other peoples experiences. I read some stories of newbies who were surprised they had a broody sitting on eggs or a hen that disappeared for 3+ weeks who appeared again with a bunch of chicks to eat from the easy access layer feed.

One of the things that often happens is that a broody who sits tight on say 6 eggs, has 7 or 8 the next day, more again a day later and this goes on until she has a nest that becomes too large to keep warm. Problem is that other hens keep laying in the broodies nest.

I think its mainly a wise recommendation if you dont want a staggered hatch because that is what is happening with uncontrolled eggs. There are often eggs nearly full developed that get abandoned because the 2 - max 3 days old need to be fed.

Thats why I always changed fake eggs with eggs that were marked. Took away newly laid eggs. Even then I had differences in the day of hatch. Although never to a problematic extend.

 

[Perris]

Small rant. I hear quite often people saying that you need to place new eggs under a broody when she commits to sitting, because the embryos in the old eggs she periodically sat on will have died. If that were the case, wouldn't that mean that every chicken left to make a nest and hatch chicks on her own accord would be unsuccessful. Unless of course, a female doing a few "test runs" for a few days before committing to brooding is not the status quo; that I do not know. Maybe I should not be talking unless I knew the answer to the above, but seems to me like we can't trust chickens to sort out their natural behaviours anymore. Tax for the rant, and for the randomnes (and for possibly being wrong). Picture from today, the grown chicks of a hen who didn't receive any kind of assistance from me while brooding, and prepping her nestView attachment 3760585

This, from the FAO 2004, gives a rather different view of it than that commonly seen in the West:
https://www.fao.org/3/y5169e/y5169e00.htm#Contents
The focus is on small scale village production, not commercial practices and scale that we normally encounter in our reading and research. Incubation and hatching is chapter 5.

 

[ManueB]

Dig. Hmmmm, I may have made an error or a few.

I'm not sure I understand, what would you say was the error ? Letting them to sort it out all on their own ?
To me it seems a good thing that you have found a way to make roost time routine more peaceful, because it's certainly a moment when tensions can become exacerbated.

Are you still in the wait and see phase with Dig, or have your plans for their future become clearer ?

I'm a bit out of the current subject, I hope you will forgive me Shadrach for coming back to ex-batts. I wanted to do a follow-up on a post I wrote on this thread at the beginning of February 2023 comparing the lives and outcomes of the six ex-batts that have been sharing our lives since January 2020, with the six my partner's father got 13 months later from the same battery and same generation. Here was the post.

This Sunday I was invited at my partner's father's house. He is the one that got us into getting ex-battery hens. He got six hens from the place as ours and same generation, except he got them when they were thrown out at 15 months, and we got ours one year before at 3 months (they had no ended layers left when my partner arrived there). He also doesn't keep them at all outside like us, they are locked up in a 10 m 2 run / coop and only come out for half an hour or an hour daily under his wife's supervision. They eat the cheaper all flock feed we find here that's mostly wheat and corn.
So it's interesting to compare how they are respectively doing. We have four left with one still unwell from a hawk attack at Christmas. He has only three, but one got caught by a fox that managed to come in their run. Of the three left, the one that is in best health and active is a cross beak little thing that probably had a very strong will to live just to survive the battery. They have named her Popeye and she is their favorite, she is the only one still laying, once or twice a week. One other is looking good but a bit slow, and one is very lethargic. Their feathers are notably in a better shape than ours, maybe because they have no rooster or maybe just the luck of genetics. All in all, there is a small difference with ours regarding their general state, but not so much, the greatest notable difference being that three of our fours are still laying three to five eggs a week.

My partner's father, even if he likes the chickens, still sees them as laying machines. His wife mentioned that once some years ago they had bought point of lay pullets from a breeder 18 euros each, and that those hens had laid until they died, the oldest one being six. His reply was that with 18 euros he could get 18 ended ex-batts (they cost one euro each).

My ex-batts for tax.
View attachment 3398126

Since I wrote this post in february 2023, I (badly) euthanised on the 21 june Brune, that was dying from EYP and had flystrike. And we lost Cannelle at the beginning of this week. She had had EYP this summer and recovered, but this time had a bad case of ascites. I didn't do a necropsy but wouldn't be too surprised if it was cancer. So we now have two remaining ex-batts out of the six, Blanche and Nougat, that are almost four and a half years old. Blanche never recovered from last year's hawk attack ; she lost an eye, and is what I would call lightly invalid ; but she hangs on to life even though we dug a grave for her months ago. Nougat is doing good, she is in good shape, eats and is active, is still laying about ten eggs a month and looks like she won't be in trouble for a while.

My partner 's father lost two of his remaining ex-batts when we had a week of 40°c/ 105 this summer. Not enough shade and too tiny a space to get cool. The only one that remained was Popeye, the tiny crossbeak. Like Blanche, her grit kept her alive although she should have been the first to die. And because my partner's stepmother liked her especially, she fed her some extras that probably helped. However, she came to a sad ending at the beginning of January. The new generation of ex-batts, that at the beginning had gotten really well along with the older hens, turned on her once she was getting weak and sick. They kept pecking at her, harassing her, and not letting her eat enough. It would probably have been a good idea to isolate her but although they did like Popeye for people who see most chickens as laying commodities, they didn't have a space for it and didn't want to go the trouble to do it, I guess. So she died scared and bullied and the remaining hens were beginning to peck at her remains when they found her in the morning. My partner's stepmum felt bad about it after but I don't know if she will do things differently.

So I guess the fact that ours got out of the battery at three months and were kept ranging in a wide yard, whereas theirs spent a year longer in the battery and had cramped living conditions in a coop and run did make a small difference in longevity, but a difference in months, maybe a year at best. It did not compensate the production hybrid layer genetics.

And, loosing Cannelle at the beginning of this week has me wonder again if I am definitely done with keeping ex-batts once our two remaining leave us, or if the short lives we can give them here after the battery do make it worth it.

In 2022, they were six.

Today, Blanche and Nougat.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm not sure I understand, what would you say was the error ? Letting them to sort it out all on their own ?
To me it seems a good thing that you have found a way to make roost time routine more peaceful, because it's certainly a moment when tensions can become exacerbated.

The error is, or may be, that I have interefered too much.

And, loosing Cannelle at the beginning of this week has me wonder again if I am definitely done with keeping ex-batts once our two remaining leave us, or if the short lives we can give them here after the battery do make it worth it.

Ask the Ex Battery hens if they think having even a few months of a better life is worth it.