Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Perris]

Your articles and posts about feeding are thought-provoking and sparking important conversation. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience.

thanks for the support. So many people seem to misunderstand the points I'm trying to make, or apparently struggle with any kind of logic, that I sometimes wonder why I bother. Also I'm sure plenty of people are really fed up with the topic - to whom I apologize sincerely. I just can't bear to see novices being given bad advice.

 

[RoyalChick]

thanks for the support. So many people seem to misunderstand the points I'm trying to make, or apparently struggle with any kind of logic, that I sometimes wonder why I bother. Also I'm sure plenty of people are really fed up with the topic - to whom I apologize sincerely. I just can't bear to see novices being given bad advice.

I too appreciate your writing on this topic and feel I have learned a lot, so thank you!
I think your most recent thread (the one that is getting bad tempered) however, may just be the wrong way to approach the discussion.

I think what we need is an easy way to answer the 'it is all because you fed treats' posts in the emergency thread.
I am meaning the following all too common phenomenon:
Novice poster: 'Help my chicken just got attacked by a raccoon and is bleeding badly what do I do?'
Response: 'What are you feeding her - you must cut out all treats'

I am thinking that a well reasoned response to the person who posts as above would include:
- Bringing them back to the immediate situation
- Explaining that diet is unlikely to be the cause (or if it might be, then at least it is only one of several possible causes)
- Addressing head on that the commercial feed may be inadequate (low vitamin B levels because of degradation is an easy one and I believe well documented, though I would have to look it up again)
- Providing a link to your article and the British Hen Welfare Trust thing on protein levels

Early thoughts.

 

[notabitail]

I think what we need is an easy way to answer the 'it is all because you fed treats' posts in the emergency thread.
I am meaning the following all too common phenomenon:
Novice poster: 'Help my chicken just got attacked by a raccoon and is bleeding badly what do I do?'
Response: 'What are you feeding her - you must cut out all treats'

Wait. People reply like that to a post about a chicken being attacked? What on earth? How stupid are people?

 

[RoyalChick]

Wait. People reply like that to a post about a chicken being attacked? What on earth? How stupid are people?

Well I exaggerate a little to make the point, but yes, when the right response is to work logically through the possibilities - trauma, tumor, infection, stress - some folk go straight to treats.
When you engage some of these folk privately they will say forage doesn’t count. But that isn’t logical - if the hens break into my veggie garden and eat the lettuce, that is forage. But if I pick the lettuce and give it to them it is a treat? Makes no sense.

 

[Ribh]

This is true. I should probably point out they're only skittish with strangers-cum-predators. They come barrelling towards me like a certain someone's avatar if they think I come bearing gifts

I have lost count of the number of photos of idyllic scenes ruined by my opening the door to take a photo, whereupon they all drop everything and come charging over!

I have the same problem, @Perris. Plus a couple of nutters who bang on the door to be let in to lay. Then the whole troop will follow me round the yard any time I put in an appearance, & my little Tootsie will come & scream@ me to come solve whatever problem she is currently having!
Tootsie.

 

[MrsNorthie]

what none of them will engage with is that there are significant inconsistencies in the ME figures given for the raw materials. They write as if the numbers were written in stone, not that they vary with the raw material, the methods of testing used, the birds they run the tests on etc. etc. This paper from 2020 reviews a century of making these calculations, and suggests the whole system needs a rethink.
http://dx.doi.org/10.3382/ps/pez511

They picked one part to focus on, instead of looking at your post as a whole. Some sounded quite defensive. I am here to learn as much as I can to give my feathered loves the best life possible, I freely admit, I am not perfect and not all-knowing.

I do know that my birds will not touch pellets. My neighbor (that we give free eggs to ..) bought the chickens an organic pellet layer feed (22% protein..) and a scratch that has 16 % protein, they would not touch the pellets..LOL They will eat these if I soak them over night, but the non-organic, standard commercial pellet feed, they won't touch it for love or money. The boys also seem to know that they shouldn't eat the layer feed and stick to the high protein grains.

 

[MrsNorthie]

We'd not thought much about chickens and water until recently. Our only body of water is a seasonal creek. It's small and runs 6 months a year. The chickens rarely regarded it until the Speckled Sussex came along.

The Speckles don't believe in fences so range where they darn well please, including the field with the creek through it.

At first, Peck was so wary of water she'd make a large loop to take the land bridge to the other side of the creek. Starla would simply fly to the other side.

Lil Nugs, however, taught them they can not only wade through the water...

View attachment 3847221
View attachment 3847222

...they can bob for things in it. Salamanders, snails, crawdads, drowned grubs...

Nugs ended up extra hydrated instead of catching this particular grub. That's okay; she'd probably dug up 2 dozen already that evening. The grass is thriving thanks to their help this year.

They are gorgeous! Our pond is pretty deep and there is a pretty big drop after the first couple of feet, I wish we had a nice little creek instead, I think they would have SOOO much fun with that!

 

[Shadrach]

These kinds of reflections are cool, maybe because they show nuances in how we respond to our chicken charges, and how we can naturally take different approaches with different individuals.

AGC is part of a group of chicks with whom I was uncharacteristically hands-off. They were more standoffish than previous chicks, and I found myself respecting their space. Plus they were straight run from a breeder, and I didn't want to accidentally over-coddle baby cockerels and turn them into monsters.

An obvious cockerel chick, I handled AGC the least, and the result was our most aloof chicken...until he started flying out of the yard at 18 months. Since it could take an hour to retrieve him as he barreled down the mountain towards the neighbors' dogs, I thought I'd see if I could get him comfortable with being handled.

Food offerings work wonders. We quickly ended up with a rooster who demands wattle rubs. Like your Big Red, @fluffycrow

I used to worry this kind of behavior could result in a rooster feeling the need to boss around me or other humans. DH is a target for rooster aggression because he's kind of an aggressive rooster himself . Game recognize game. But AGC is extremely patient with humans, and DH and AGC are great friends.

I've posted this before, but it's an oldie/goodie.

I mentioned in my roster article how I found grooming the roosters, if they would let me, a very usefull way of establishing trust. I stroke Henry while he's on the roost bare least thing before closing them in for the night. Sometimes he doesn't even pull his head out from under his wing. Overall though Henry is not a friendly rooster.
Cillin, a rooster in Catalonia was the friendliest towards me I've encountered.
This is mainly due to his mother Otic getting killed defending him from a hawk. He hadn't at that stage been introduced to any of the tribes and he wasn't bantam size even though he had bantam blood. He was on orphan.
He used to hid in the bamboo clump opposite where I worked in the car port. He had his own coop, one of the maternity coops, but nobody to hang around with during the day. I started offering him pieces of walnut. He got braver and started coming over as soon as I arrived. I made sure he got fed and eventually he followed me back to my house. He wouldn't come in at first; he sort of hovered by the door and moved off if any other chickens arrived. He and I ended up spending a lot of time together. He came in the house every day; not just for food, it was a safe zone for him.

 

[BDutch]

Novice poster: 'Help my chicken just got attacked by a raccoon and is bleeding badly what do I do?'
Response: 'What are you feeding her - you must cut out all treats'

.

They are gorgeous! Our pond is pretty deep and there is a pretty big drop after the first couple of feet, I wish we had a nice little creek instead, I think they would have SOOO much fun with that!

We have a well / small stream behind our garden (municipality land).
It’s deep enough to get drowned for chickens. But usually the chickens avoid it and they never tried to wade or swim in it as far as I know.

He hadn't at that stage been introduced to any of the tribes

What do you mean with this? Was he stil hanging around with his mommy and sleeping together in a nest?

My young boy Tintin and Pearl do that too most of the time. But there is no real tribe at my place because I don’t have an adult rooster.
Tintin is very afraid of me. I don’t understand why. Maybe because his mothers Katrientje and Pearl were both very defensive when he was smaller.

Sometimes its seems to take years for a chicken to get more confident. Janice was afraid of me too for several years, but she seems to thrust me more nowadays.

All chickens - 2 broodies. They love the terrace to chill
Photo taken through the window.

 

[Shadrach]

I've followed most of the feed debates. I agree, Perris does well in raising awareness and I'm pretty sure there are people now trying something similar who wouldn't have done prior to reading Perris's article. Thread debates with two entrenched sides isn't likely to prove productive.
It's worth bearing in mind we eat similar crap and have the weight gain to prove it, not to mention the heart problems, the cancers, the type 2 diabetes, diet related depressions and much more no doubt.


My view is let them out and they'll find what they can and that tosses any 10% rule out the window.
The problem lies with this word "treat". If many of us are incapable of feeding ourselves properly it's difficult to see how such people are going to feed healthy treats. It does require a bit of research and a handfull of scratch from a bag chucked in the run has it's appeal as an easy option.
Good food costs money. Nutrition is a quite complicated matter. Most people just can't be bothered, or try to buy organic feed.