Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[MrsNorthie]

Someone was beating up his dad and his little brother..So I brought him in and am making him watch Hearts with me..LOL #RoosterTax

 

[kcan2]

Someone was beating up his dad and his little brother..So I brought him in and am making him watch Hearts with me..LOL #RoosterTax
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He looks mildly interested

 

[MrsNorthie]

He looks mildly interested

I gave him a walnut at half time during extra time. He wanted another, I said he could if Hearts won.. Squiggy is now the walnut eating official lucky roo! LOL

 

[BDutch]

Can't have too much Stilton.

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Do you have more chickens with cheesy names?

 

[Shadrach]

Cold wet and miserable. One and a half hours, most of it in the field.

 

[no fly zone]

The newest Skeksis grandchildren

 

[Molpet]

The newest Skeksis grandchildren
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So

 

[tranquiliti]

The newest Skeksis grandchildren
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LOVE

 

[Shadrach]

I'm begining to understand just how crucial even just a couple of hours ranging time is to the field chickens and I suspect this is the case for all chickens. Some of the studies on improving the lot of commercial chickens write about substituing/replicating environments so the chicken can carry out natural behviours. One such improvement is providing materials for chickns to scratch in. What gets overlooked (interesting) is why they scratch. They don't do it to manicure their toe nails although scrtaching does, they do it because that's their primary way of finding food. If they don't find food they scratch less if at all after a while.

It's this scratching the groud, checking, pecking and moving on we call foraging. Some seem to think that chickens are grazing creatures. While they will eat grasses and plants, mostly I see them with their beaks close to the ground scratching a patch and then moving and repeating. They've been finding food for thousands of years by foraging. It's what they are meant to do. It's so much a part of what they are meant to do that it links their whole physical and mental health to the activity.

Reading through some of the feed debates, some dismiss what would seem to be a relatively small nutrient contribution next to commercial feed as a marketing gimmic and of little nutritional value.
Recent studies on nutrition for humans have suggested that we can and probably should increase the herb and spice content of out food beyond the usual salt pepper and chilli. Apparently many of these herbs and spices need to be looked at from the gut health side of things rather than a lab analysis report. We were foragers (not really hunters at any point in our evolution) and nutrition advice is still despite the number of alternative diets is eat a bit of everything you can find that's edible because like the chicken we are omniverous. Lots of plants have very small quantities of chemicals we make use of. Studies have picked up on various possible health benefits for many plants but rightly point out one would need to eat a lot before it matched a medical dose, for want of a better description. Suppose one eats a little of said plant over a long period of time (?)

The more other creatures are studied the clearer it is that many self medicate on these not nutritionally significant plant antd bug contributions
I've watched chickens pass over what I would have thought was an interesting bug or plant and head for one particular place and start digging or tearing bits of a plant that they didn't show much interest in a few weeks ago.

Anyway, it's still damp, grey and chilly. Slightly better at 5C before dusk with a breeze rather than a wind.

 

[Canadian Wind]

Birds are going to be getting some nice treats. Went to the grocery store today and they had packages of 300g of walnut halves for only $1 CA! Grabbed three.