Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[fuzzi]

Rambling about bantams.
In the Netherlands we have almost as many bantam breeds as there are large breeds.
The different breeds are very different indeed. From not being able to fly / being flighty at all (bantam Cochin) to very slender and flighty (my crossbreed Janice ).
We have a site with descriptions of all known breeds in the Netherlands that gives information about the breeds.

Example or the Vorwerk page:
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https://www.kippenpagina.nl/kippenrassen/
You need to scroll down beyond the ads to get to the alphabetical list. You can translate it to English if you know the Dutch name and are interested in the characteristics. Kriel means bantam.

@Ribh Bantam Campines are the English variation of Breakel krielen and the come in different colours. I almost bought a 6pack silver Braekel hatching eggs, but when I went to the guy who kept them I choose otherwise because I could see how skittish they where. https://www.kippenpagina.nl/kippenrassen/braekelkriel.html
The Braekel Krielen originate from the Netherlands and are a very old breed.

Spoiler: Translated page of the Braekel kriel

Braekels are temperamental, hardened, trusting and are good flyers.

The color strokes are silver, black, white, gold, blue, blue hemmed and white yellow skin.

Braekels hens lay about 200 eggs per year the weight of the egg is approximately 35 grams and the color of the egg is white.

As a utility breed, the Braekels belong to the laying breeds and decorative breeds.

The Braekel Kriel has a single comb.

The weight of the rooster is about 700 grams and of the hens 650 grams.

The ring size is 13 mm for the rooster and 11 mm for the hens.

For more information about the breed Braekel Hoen, please take a look at the link(s) below

The Brakelhoen Website

Oh, the Vorwerk have a striking plumage! Handsome.

 

[fuzzi]

The fact that you're practical enough to push past the difficulty is something I really respect. Because it takes a great deal of rationalizing to continue to eat meat if I have to outsource the slaughtering part.


Sorry Thank you for sharing, though. This is helpful to hear.

Most of our current chickens were raised during the height of the pandemic, when our typical social connections were cut off, and we were home all the time. I sat with the chicks for hours a day. We bonded.

I can see a future where I may be open to harvesting birds I'm not so close with, particularly problem cockerels who won't find better lives elsewhere.

However, as it stands, our "culling" of problem boys entails building a new coop and expanding the electrified yard by several thousand square feet.

Exhibit Andre:
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My first brood were raised by me, no broody, so they're friendlier. Martha tugs on my skirt when she wants something, and Rahab comes over and verbally expresses her need for me to provide crickets!

I could only cull them for humane reasons.

 

[kcan2]

The chicken house is less cherry. They were going to tear it down before the sale, but we asked them to leave it. So, here is an example of 20th-century Appalachian chicken accommodations:

Great photos of those historic chicken keeping implements and building, do you know the last time it was in use?

 

[HiEverybirdy]

And the spare rooster mentioned is filling the void ASAP. He did an initial chase when I let the hens out about 2 pm. He is settling down and much better behaved than in August. None of these 8 hens are laying anyway. But they weren't laying in August either.

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ETA he's around 17 months

He's striking with those green tail feathers. Is he a Dark Cornish?

 

[HiEverybirdy]

Great photos of those historic chicken keeping implements and building, do you know the last time it was in use?

Maybe 20 years ago? I need to ask again, both when it was built and the last time they had chickens.

Dates are sort of fluid here. We're hearing the barn is only about 50 years old; its possible the chicken house is also that vintage.

 

[Molpet]

He's striking with those green tail feathers. Is he a Dark Cornish?

Yes he is part dark Cornish.
He went back to his old coop before nightfall. He has 3 hens that sleep with him there. I'll have to see how this works out. I hope he moves over on his own.

 

[no fly zone]

On the topic of old-keeper ways, we arrived in Appalachia 2 decades too late to learn from old-school chicken keepers. Employment called new generations elsewhere, and land has been sold to outsiders like us, sigh.

Speaking of which, neighbors gave us an opportunity to expand this summer, accepting our offer on a treasured parcel of family land they no longer have the desire to keep up.

Whereas our first parcel of their family land was for cattle grazing and hay (and ended up covered in kudzu; if you know about the US South, kudzu is part of our history), this parcel was for chickens, and chestnut and walnut trees, and walking, and a pleasant place to complete sundry tasks.

There's a barn for milling cattle corn and drying milled lumber and tobacco. It's still in great shape.

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The chicken house is less cherry. They were going to tear it down before the sale, but we asked them to leave it. So, here is an example of 20th-century Appalachian chicken accommodations:
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There's still a pile of crushed seashells outside the coop.
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That is awesome.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning one and all!

Tea is ready and very good.

Temperature is in the 70s mostly sunny.

Have a great day!

 

[Shadrach]

I found another good paper by Collias et.al. about the reproductive success (or otherwise) of descendants of a flock of 37 RJF living wild within a Californian zoo since 1942 (so relatively easy to observe), followed for 7 years. The same researchers have observed RFJ in the wild in India and assert that the behaviour and social structure of the birds were essentially the same, bar the degree of dispersion over space.

Abstract: "The evolutionary success of individuals must ultimately be evaluated in terms of their lifetime contribution of mature young to the breeding population. The greater lifetime breeding success of the more dominant hens in an unconfined flock of Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus) gave crucial evidence why female dominance hierarchies have evolved in this species. The number of chicks reared to independence by 28 hens of one flock from 1982 to 1988 was significantly associated with a hen's dominance, life-span, and year of hatching... The top 3 hens in the peck order added more offspring of breeding age to the population than did the remaining 25 adult hens of the flock. Eleven of the 28 hens reared no young successfully."

Fwiw, the statistics for my flock building to about the same size over the same time frame would not mirror this, but my flock get fed, and a lot of the survival rate for those RJF is probably explained by their access, or not, to adequate nutrition; a low position in the pecking order can be fatal where all food has to be foraged.

On broodies and their offspring, this para is particularly interesting I think: "We compared the dominance status of 20 Red Junglefowl hens in the central flock with the dominance status of their mothers. There was no significant correlation (r = 0.09). However, the different generations were intermingled as they occurred naturally. Most hens were daughters or granddaughters of the three top hens in the flock. [So obviously those offspring were not driven off] The more senior hens of the older age classes tended to dominate hens of younger generations regardless of relationship. Figure 3 shows the yearling descendants of the three top hens. These three hens and some of their yearling offspring comprised two-thirds (6 males and 6 females) of the 18 emigrants from the central flock roost to other flock roosts from 1982 to 1988 [so some 18 birds left this flock to join a different flock within the zoo]."

There was no further discussion of why and how some birds left the flock being studied and joined one of the other feral RJF flocks within the zoo.

But I did think it interesting that daughters did not inherit the status of their mothers. That older mothers were much more successful broodies than younger ones fits with Shad's experience/ instincts/ reading, and it's what I've done for the past few years. But as I let youngsters brood this year - even 1 who was still a pullet when they hatched - and they've done relatively well, my jury is still out on that one. My oldest hen has only 1 surviving daughter, who has no offspring, but her son is the current dom, so her genes are being passed on widely through him.

Open access, so if you want to read it all, it's here
https://academic.oup.com/auk/article/111/4/863/5168263

Interesting read. Thanks for the link. I hadn't read that one.
It reads reasonably close to the other studies I've read. I think all the studies I've read state the group was family, related by blood.
From memory in other studies the maximum group size was 12, again all related.
I wonder what differences location makes to tribe size. If an acre or more per tribe is correct then I would imagine that tribes territory would need to expand a lot to feed 30 individuals.

 

[Shadrach]

Oh, I love that third picture. Who's peeking on the left?

That's Sylph. That's Tull on the floor and their mum Fret on the roost bar.