Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[RoyalChick]

I know I'm not the only one who would love to see the video of Bernadette carrying an egg under her chin.

I will search. I take too many pictures and videos so am unable to find stuff. About 98% of my photos are of my chickens which makes it harder!

 

[Ladies-Eight]

I h
I have had a broody collect all the eggs (including the fake eggs) into one nest. I have heard, but have not seen, that if there's a divider they will hold the eggs under their wings to maneuver around it.

I wondered if they moved them that way.

Thanks.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning one and all!

Tea is ready.

Temperature is in the 70s partly sunny.

Have a great day!

Thanks to everyone who came back with information about hens moving their eggs and how they do it.

 

[SimpleJenn]

Funny enough, I caught my silkie with a ceramic egg under each wing this morning! I wish I had my phone with at the time to get a picture.

 

[BDutch]

I saw my broodies rolling and moving eggs under their chin several times. But never with their wings.

Pearl (ex-mother of Timtin) is broody for the second time this year., but I don't want to watch how she moves eggs around.

I moved the egg from Pearl myself to the egg carton. I can easily take it in my hand.
And for now I moved the broody to the second run, so she cant go back to her favourite nestbox.

I still hope I have at least one pullet (3 chicks) . Its too complicated to have broodies and chicks running around in my setup. So I do not want a third hatch this year.

Ini mini, Black, Rasta, Thompson and Thomson searching for fallen raspblackies (mix of raspberries and blackberries):

 

[Molpet]

On the topics of roost-time routines and the habits chickens teach each other: Langshan hens Bebe and Frida have recently combined habits to develop a collaborative evening ritual.

Bebe's been last to the roost ever since she found out a few years ago that crickets come out at dusk. Meanwhile, one of Frida's quirks is she loves water on her feed. So much that, when there's only dry feed, she'll alternate between the feeder and waterer for a few beaks of food, a few beaks of water, food, water, food, water. Like so:

In the past month, Bebe decided she likes Frida's water/food habit, and Frida decided to start staying up late like Bebe, maybe because it's easier to go back and forth to the waterer when the run's less crowded (especially when Beakwipe [me] keeps moving the dish waterers further from the feeders to keep Frida from gunking them up with crumbs ).

They do this every night for 10-15 minutes after everyone else has roosted. By the time they roost, it's pretty dark, and I'm pretty bugbitten from waiting on them, but it's adorable to watch.

Have you thought about feeding them soaked feed?
I ferment a day and they love it.

 

[Molpet]

3 hens with 8 chicks. They had been sitting for a couple months without hatching any. So I finally put 24 eggs in the incubator and gave fresh eggs to the hens. 4 days before hatch, I gave 3 to 4 different nests. 4 eggs didn't develop, so I had 8 left in the incubator. 1 died the day after hatching, 2 didn't hatch, at least yet. I have had eggs hatch 4 days late and Sunday and Monday the others hatched.
A young turkey hen I was wondering why nothing had hatched in 3 tries.... I caught her eating the eggs I gave her the day before they should have hatched.... She's still sitting on eggs that should be rotting by now. Not sure if I'll invite her to dinner or try to sell with full disclosure of baby eater or try again.

2 nests in a different coop, one hen hatch 2 and a pair hatched 1. These 3 hens are young flighty idiots. I opened the dog crates they hatched in and they promptly went ballistic attacking me. Chicks ran in all directions and one I couldn't find and it finally came out. I decided they could learn on these 3 and weren't get any from the incubator.

These 3 hens below hatched the 3 incubator eggs and were very well behaved. They are older hens that have done this before. They got the 5 from the incubator.

I normally would like to keep them in the coop for a week but I found 2 chicks were out and everyone else was in so I let everyone out.

 

[fuzzi]

We were away on vacation for five days, and all the chicks seem to be weeks older!

This is "Little Chick" aka Zacchaeus, and he grew a tail while we were gone.

The pullets I am keeping:

Joanna

Esther

Priscilla aka Prissy

And here's the cockerel that I decided to keep as well. He's Silas.

If I don't get anyone local interested in the other two boys they will go to auction this Saturday. There's enough room in the hoop coop for all, but youngsters, especially cockerels, cause stress!

 

[fuzzi]

A couple of hours around lunch time and four more later in the afternoon and evening.
Everybody except Carbon who is still picking her feathers and now has a slight limp seems pretty healthy.
Mow decided that it was her turn to peck at the chicks at roost time, naturally chaos ensued.
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I think this young pullet is going to turn out to be a rather attractive hen.
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This young cockerel was the third to hatch and has overtaken the rest in developement.
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This is the one who got left in the nest.
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This is the shy/less confident one believe it or not.
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They're all lovely.

 

[fuzzi]

The chicks all went in on their own tonight a bit after 9.30pm.
I'm rather relieved to be frank. I had some serious doubts that the rescue chick would manage it. I didn't want to take a picture in case I ruined what had been a ver peacefull roosting. The female got on the roost bar next to Henry and the other grey chick got up besider her. The two boys roosted on the other bar Mow roosts on.
They all fret before going to roost looking for options other than the coop. The female chick and grey chick fret most but the grey chick usually takes the plunge before the female. I'm assuming the rescue chick went in last. I didn't see. I just noticed the extension roost bare where they were was empty and when I checked the coop later they were all in.

C has done something about the goose run at last; rather C has got a bunch of volunteers to do it for them. It had got seriously bad in there. The two other coops have gone and with them the rats that lived under them. The plastic pool that just stank and leaked is gone as well. The fence has been repaired and the bulk of the run stripped. It did need doing even if it looks ver bare now. Hopefully, now that's it's in a mangeable state, C will maintain it.

The volunteers also started on the large community plot I've been discussing with C. My objective is to try and return the field to a smallholding and away from the current allotment style. So much land is wasted in pathways, underused plots and the rest of the field, particularly the orchard gets ignored on the not my problem basis.
I think sixteen volunteers came.
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While all this was going on the chickens had to stay in the coop run. I did get them out from 6pm to 9.30pm after the people had gone.
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So, how does a small holding differ from the allotments?