Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[fuzzi]

I looked at Fret's most recent chicks and saw three boys and one girl for a moment.
With a bit of an expansion and of course two or more going broody, statistics say I should have enough males to eat chicken a couple of times a month; small portions naturally.

Bantams don't have much meat.

There's too much drama in the coop, so the juvies are heading to the auction next Saturday. I'm considering keeping one. If I didn't want to eventually breed I might keep this boy, he's got more of the Dominique sweetness than the others, the purebred Sussex.

 

[Shadrach]

Public transport issue again ?

I missed the bus and then fell asleep on the train ending up at Temple Meads the main Bristol train station. I'm normally home by 10pm if I don't stop anywhere on route.

Not clear on the picture if the culprit is human or animal ?
It looks like you can possibly save some of them .

No it isn't but I would expect say a couple of fox cubs fighting to make more randon damage. The damage is just to the onions.
Yep I think I saved most of them today. They won't grow as large but most should still grow.

 

[Shadrach]

Ex Batts good afternoon one and all!

Tea is ready.

Temperature is in the 80s mostly sunny.

Have a great day!

I was out and about this morning for blood work, go to the bank, stop at store, to come homeand pick up our puppy.

The puppy decided to chew up a bottle of Medical Marijuana and ate the three gummies in it.

She was standing very still and almost fell over on her side, then she would take off running through the house, then she laid down and didn't want to get up.
This was a very scary situation and she did not get to come home as of yet.

Where is she?

 

[BDutch]

Where is she?

Not with Lucy in sky for sure.
In strawberry fields maybe?
Or a in a dancing doing a golden brown walz?

Please keep us updated Ladies8.

 

[Shadrach]

An hour this morning and four hours this afternoon. It stayed dry and mainly cloudy at around 14C.

There is something about this particular area that makes a good dustbath. Each year this area, once I've weeded gets dug out by the chickens for dust bathing.

I makes small compost piles in the allotment run for the chickens when I weed. They've proven to be very productive. I've got four going currently and I'm dumping the weeds and no doubt some veg seeds I pull from my plot on these piles.

This is whats left of the last pile now that I've removed the sticks and stems.
They're not trying to make a dust bath here, they're finding something to eat when they dig.

I've been using the phone camera recently and getting similar picture quality but like the camera it all goes wrong in low light.

 

[MrsNorthie]

A chicken that lays over 300 eggs a year has another feed demand than the old chicken breeds that lay 60 -120 eggs a year.

I wonder, if by reverting back to a more natural feeding process, if we could encourage less egg production, therefore extending the lives of our chickens over generations?

I agree. But I don't think many (any?) people reading BYC have such productive hens with such needs. There is really not so much difference between old and new breeds.

I just looked up the notes from the place where we got our buffs,

I worry that this is still too many eggs to produce each year, I need to start a count, but, it is difficult to get individual counts, as they take turns laying in 3 different nesting boxes. *sigh but I wonder if feeding the whole grain and foraging as opposed to commercial layer feed will slow their production.

I will have to fit a camera to count how many times a week that individual girls enter the nesting box and lay and then compare that to their off-spring. I could do a mathematical average by the number of eggs we get each day divided by the number of girls, but that won't necessarily answer the question about the individuals. It is far more important to me that my birds have a longer happy healthy life than to have a maximum number of eggs.

 

[MrsNorthie]

It's been years since I've heard this!

What. A. Treat.

I love all sorts of music, and Metallica is a favourite. We took my boys and 2 of their friends to see them at the Fairgrounds in Tucson, AZ, now, I don't like crowds and there were at least 50,000 people there. We were center stage in a big open field, people were there with little kids, like 5 y/o. :-( Mosh pits breaking out all over the place.

There were 5 bands on before them, 3, that I can't remember, Apocolyptica and Scars On Broadway, (a side project from one of the guys from System of a Down.) 100 Degrees (F) No shade, water $10./bottle..lol, I came close to getting into a fight a couple of times, I went to punch some guy who shoved me then stood in front of me on my foot, my ex grabbed my arm and drug me off to the side of the crowd, just before Metallica.. after standing in that prime spot, all day!

Then we were stuck in the parking lot for 5 hours after the show, waiting to be able to get out, followed by a 2 - 3 hour drive home. It was so worth it!!

We went to see them at an indoor venue a year later on the Death Magnetic tour. (AC/DC was way louder though!)

My Husband and #1 Son were scheming to get me tickets for the Kid Rock/Miranda Lambert Freedom Tour (similar outdoor venue) for my birthday in July, but I asked them not to waste the $600 (for the weekend), I do not want to do crowds anymore. LOL

 

[MrsNorthie]

Headbanger MJ!

 

[MrsNorthie]

Ex Batts good afternoon one and all!

Tea is ready.

Temperature is in the 80s mostly sunny.

Have a great day!

I was out and about this morning for blood work, go to the bank, stop at store, to come homeand pick up our puppy.

The puppy decided to chew up a bottle of Medical Marijuana and ate the three gummies in it.

She was standing very still and almost fell over on her side, then she would take off running through the house, then she laid down and didn't want to get up.
This was a very scary situation and she did not get to come home as of yet.

I hope that she is OK! Poor baby!

 

[HiEverybirdy]

Ours have gone mad too. I think I will be making blackberry pie for the Egg Thief this weekend.

I have a blackberry story from this week. Well, it's a chicken story that starts out as a berry story, but "bear" with me...

Blackberries ripen here in another couple weeks, but black raspberries and mulberries have already started, which means annual visitors have arrived:

We'll see bears weekly until wineberries finish up in mid-July. After that, heat drives them back up the mountain.

I've almost run smack into a number of bears while out walking or picking berries, but we don't intentionally get closer than 200', for their safety and ours. These photos are with a 400mm lens from over 250' away. She did have cubs with her.

I snuck a few feet closer, to the trees by the chickenyard, to photograph the cubs but didn't get any photos of note.

That's because a) she kept them well hidden, and b) I only had 5 seconds to shoot before a convoy of speckled butts zipped by, cutting a shortcut to the bear family

The Sussex had been enjoying their evening freerange, around a wall of trees, well out of sight (sans their man Andre who doesn't fly over fences as gracefully as they do).

Bears don't usually stick around, and the birds were busy edging raised beds, so I didn't think to shuttle them back to safety behind the electric fence. It wasn't on my radar that they'd rush a family of apex predators.

Perhaps it should've been. The chickenyard backs up to a game trail, and the chickens occasionally run over for a better look at the wildlife. Here's a blurry photo of them visiting a young buck the other morning.

I've even seen them follow a bear family along the fence, at a distance. Always with that 6', electrified fence in between, and rest assured all creatures know not to touch the zappy fence.

For whatever reason, I never thought they'd chase wildlife without the fence. In a flash, the Speckles were 50' closer to the bears than I was.

I instinctively started waving arms and clapping to get them to come back. A glare from the mama bear reminded me my behavior was 1,000% more likely to exasperate a bear than change the path of a chicken. So would running to grab the chickens. Fortunately my brain started working again; I whipped around and rushed to Stilton's yard for the jar of scratch.

Merely touching this jar has the magical effect of instantly teleporting nearby chickens to a circle around your feet. So I had to dodge clingy chickens as I rushed back through the trees to where the Speckles would hear me.

They were now 75' from the bears, who were watching the approaching chicken dinners with growing interest. I gave the jar the hardest, loudest shake of its life. True to form, the Speckles made U-turns and fly-galloped to me the jar. They'll do anything for that scratch. I mix in a handful of raisins, and they act like they've won the lottery when they get one.

No idea what the outcome would've been without magic scratch. The Speckles could use a close call to rein them in, but a black-bear close call wasn't the kind of teaching moment I wanted for these sassypants.