Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[fuzzi]

Just one hour today. I've got family drama. It's sucking hours out of my day.
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What an incredible fluffy white butt in the first photo!

 

[kcan2]

we have had a few days of proper sunshine and it has had a transformative effect on a tomato plant that I brought in about a month ago (since it had grown from seed very late in a cold wet spring and was really trying its hardest in adverse conditions):
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Btw, the main 'plant food' this tomato has had while growing in a pot, first outdoors and more recently in, is the gloopy liquor from the fermented grains 'n' peas 'n' seeds feed that I make, the liquor poured away when I rinse the grains before serving. All those phytonutrients work wonders on houseplants, and also, as I now find, on tomatoes.

Your tomato plant looks wonderful!

 

[kcan2]

being covered in Vaseline and Iodine.

perhaps preferable to family drama?

 

[Perris]

Your tomato plant looks wonderful!

thank you! Poor thing germinated from seed outside - the only one that made it this year in our terrible spring - so I thought it deserved special treatment when autumn came too soon for it

 

[Perris]

If anyone's interested, I've written an article on broody hens - focussing on the hen, not the chicks except incidentally - for the current competition. It's here
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...y-the-good-the-bad-and-the-indifferent.79643/

Any feedback will be very welcome, of course!

 

[RoyalChick]

If anyone's interested, I've written an article on broody hens - focussing on the hen, not the chicks except incidentally - for the current competition. It's here
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...y-the-good-the-bad-and-the-indifferent.79643/

Any feedback will be very welcome, of course!

That is a great article. Very interesting and thorough. I need to go back to it as I was skim reading, and then I will leave a review.
One suggestion I have is to include the statistics on hatch. Yes, include the caveat that there are many reasons an egg might not hatch, that are outside your and the hen’s control. But I would see that as a caveat to the reliability of the stats, not a reason to exclude them from analysis.
Purchased eggs aside, the rate of genetic issues in a stable flock might (is probably) more-or-less constant in terms of spontaneous mutation. It will vary by age of hen who laid the egg and by who the parents are, but still think there will be interesting things to learn about the broody hen from those stats. Size of hen, experience of hen, habits when brooding etc. I suspect even with the caveat you will have interesting observations. And of course more so the larger your numbers.

 

[Shadrach]

perhaps preferable to family drama?

Definitely.

 

[Perris]

That is a great article. Very interesting and thorough. I need to go back to it as I was skim reading, and then I will leave a review.
One suggestion I have is to include the statistics on hatch. Yes, include the caveat that there are many reasons an egg might not hatch, that are outside your and the hen’s control. But I would see that as a caveat to the reliability of the stats, not a reason to exclude them from analysis.
Purchased eggs aside, the rate of genetic issues in a stable flock might (is probably) more-or-less constant in terms of spontaneous mutation. It will vary by age of hen who laid the egg and by who the parents are, but still think there will be interesting things to learn about the broody hen from those stats. Size of hen, experience of hen, habits when brooding etc. I suspect even with the caveat you will have interesting observations. And of course more so the larger your numbers.

those are great suggestions; thank you.

I will have to go back through the records because I did not differentiate home grown from purchased hatching eggs in the data analysis for this article - and almost all hatches that have involved purchased eggs have also included a couple of home-grown ones I added as a sort of quality control check on the broody's performance (if the home-grown ones hatch and the purchased ones don't, I know the problem was the eggs not the broody), so that might take some unravelling.

In most cases of home-grown birds I can only guess who the parents are. Maria is the only one with a pea-comb so she's easy, and the Penedesencas have a coronation comb, so that *should* be easy, except that the founding roo on the Swedish Flower side had comb spurs, which look very like a small crown, so those waters are muddied. And sometimes shank colour is a clue, but that's even more complex - quite apart from the dominant versus incomplete dominant versus recessive chicken genes issue (I still struggle there). I *think* the fabulous green legs a couple of the latest generation have signals that Janeka is an ancestor somewhere along the line (she has strong yellow legs - but so did SF roo Chirk!), but that's just guessing too tbh. Just identifying which chick hatched from which egg is hard usually, never mind who the hen that laid the egg mated on the relevant occasion.

So I guess what all that is saying is that the stats are probably better left as amalgams, because differentiation would lead to a false sense of precision. Would you still be interested in the stats? Most people glaze over instantly

 

[RoyalChick]

those are great suggestions; thank you.

I will have to go back through the records because I did not differentiate home grown from purchased hatching eggs in the data analysis for this article - and almost all hatches that have involved purchased eggs have also included a couple of home-grown ones I added as a sort of quality control check on the broody's performance (if the home-grown ones hatch and the purchased ones don't, I know the problem was the eggs not the broody), so that might take some unravelling.

In most cases of home-grown birds I can only guess who the parents are. Maria is the only one with a pea-comb so she's easy, and the Penedesencas have a coronation comb, so that *should* be easy, except that the founding roo on the Swedish Flower side had comb spurs, which look very like a small crown, so those waters are muddied. And sometimes shank colour is a clue, but that's even more complex - quite apart from the dominant versus incomplete dominant versus recessive chicken genes issue (I still struggle there). I *think* the fabulous green legs a couple of the latest generation have signals that Janeka is an ancestor somewhere along the line (she has strong yellow legs - but so did SF roo Chirk!), but that's just guessing too tbh. Just identifying which chick hatched from which egg is hard usually, never mind who the hen that laid the egg mated on the relevant occasion.

So I guess what all that is saying is that the stats are probably better left as amalgams, because differentiation would lead to a false sense of precision. Would you still be interested in the stats? Most people glaze over instantly

Yes. I would be interested in stats of fully home-grown clutches, set against the facts of various parameters about the broody. Age, experience, size and whatever else you have.
Maybe it shows nothing and we can hypothesize that the broody doesn’t make a difference to the hatch rate because other factors are more important.
But maybe it will be interesting.

 

[Perris]

Yes. I would be interested in stats of fully home-grown clutches, set against the facts of various parameters about the broody. Age, experience, size and whatever else you have.
Maybe it shows nothing and we can hypothesize that the broody doesn’t make a difference to the hatch rate because other factors are more important.
But maybe it will be interesting.

OK. I'll get started on 'How good is your broody 2'... or maybe it should have a different title which reflects it's about the hatch rate rather than the broody per se?