Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[SimpleJenn]

She seems to be pondering what exactly is going on with those head feathers!

She's never seen such a fancy lad before! They were preening each other's faces for a few minutes, so hopefully they like each other.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

anyone see the lunar eclipse? I got it in penumbra, but sadly it had set here before getting far into the umbra.
View attachment 4072166

It was the middle of the night, and wildfire smoke or Hurricane Helene dust or whatever's in the air is making me so sneezy I can't think straight, so I didn't find the sweet spot on my settings until after totality.

Usually I'll wake up several times to shoot through the whole event, but this time I stopped as soon as I liked what I saw on the screen.

 

[Shadrach]

It does make sense laying hens would go for the extra protein in bugs, versus non-laying hens wanting grass. Is it high in calcium? For refilling their internal stores? I feel like I read that somewhere but I already took my bedtime pills so I am not going to look it up and fall down a research rabbithole.

Also, for people in the range, we're supposed to get a fantastic blood moon overnight. I set an alarm and hopefully I can see it.

Tax, Marble perked right up when I brought a chick out for him to look at. Poor fella is quite lonely.
View attachment 4072024

I get the impression that they are after something other than protein, or maybe as well as. I can only guess at the minerals and vitamins they get from the forage. Then there is the matter of what gets broadly described as self medication. Most creatures do this on a daily basis given the opportunity. It's a low level ingestion, perhaps for gut health, perhaps for reducing pathogen loads.

 

[Shadrach]

Two and a half rather chilly hours today. It's still getting close to freezing overnight.
I've been leaving some part rotted wood down and turning the bits over after a couple of weeks. Lots of bugs.

A deserted compost bin removed from the pile underneath. I'll mix this with some chicken droppings later.

Tull pestering for treats.

I looked for this picture yesterday but couldn't find it. A favourite mid day resting spot.

There are chickens in there somewhere.

 

[ChaosMom]

I kept looking out the kitchen door window while making dinner, in hopes of watching the girls put themselves to bed.

I never did see it, but what I DID see was a vigorous dust bath that went on for a good ten minutes, probably right before they went in for the night.

There's a 2x6 skirt board around the bottom of the run, so once they really got the hole properly dug, I could only see random body parts as they briefly appeared and disappeared - a wing, a head, a foot. It was like peeping on a Roman orgy, but for chickens! No wonder they were worn out for their bedtimes.

 

[Perris]

I've been leaving some part rotted wood down and turning the bits over after a couple of weeks. Lots of bugs.

I have dead and rotting wood all over the place, some where it occurs naturally, some deliberately placed, of every different diameter and wood present on site. They act as habitats for the invertebrates and reservoirs to reseed the rest of the garden after the chickens have harvested what they want. One of the things to come out of the Hedgerow book was - apart from the enormous number of insects that live in and on them - the number of fungi, lichens, mosses and galls that hedge plants can carry, and how little attention is normally paid to them. Galls have mites or larvae inside, so what may appear to be a chicken eating a leaf may actually be a chicken eating a mite that it knows is inside the (edible but not really the target) bit of a leaf.

I get the impression that they are after something other than protein, or maybe as well as. I can only guess at the minerals and vitamins they get from the forage.

I think likewise. I also think focussing on the plants is misguided. The majority of their foraged diet is the invertebrates that live in and on plants, I'm sure of that now. And *their* 'nutrient profiles' are even less known than that of our native plants (only commercially important 'crops' get analysed). Indeed, even their life cycles are not known in a lot of cases; thus the survey of hedgerow species left moths out of the zonal allocation (which bit of the hedgerow they live in) for that very reason, despite the fact that several hundred species of moth have been recorded living in hedges. And that's moths - relatively large invertebrates. What chickens get from forage is really, really unknown, to everyone but them. Trust your chickens' judgement people! They know, we don't!

 

[Perris]

further to the last, by a happy coincidence this appeared in the Guardian this morning
https://www.theguardian.com/science...-moles-project-uncovers-gulls-surprising-diet

and lots of astonishing photos of them at it here
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-gulls-dont-eat-ice-cream-octopus-in-pictures

 

[RoyalChick]

further to the last, by a happy coincidence this appeared in the Guardian this morning
https://www.theguardian.com/science...-moles-project-uncovers-gulls-surprising-diet

and lots of astonishing photos of them at it here
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-gulls-dont-eat-ice-cream-octopus-in-pictures

There are some fantastic pictures there. Gulls are really sea chickens!

 

[RoyalChick]

I have dead and rotting wood all over the place, some where it occurs naturally, some deliberately placed, of every different diameter and wood present on site. They act as habitats for the invertebrates and reservoirs to reseed the rest of the garden after the chickens have harvested what they want. One of the things to come out of the Hedgerow book was - apart from the enormous number of insects that live in and on them - the number of fungi, lichens, mosses and galls that hedge plants can carry, and how little attention is normally paid to them. Galls have mites or larvae inside, so what may appear to be a chicken eating a leaf may actually be a chicken eating a mite that it knows is inside the (edible but not really the target) bit of a leaf.

I think likewise. I also think focussing on the plants is misguided. The majority of their foraged diet is the invertebrates that live in and on plants, I'm sure of that now. And *their* 'nutrient profiles' are even less known than that of our native plants (only commercially important 'crops' get analysed). Indeed, even their life cycles are not known in a lot of cases; thus the survey of hedgerow species left moths out of the zonal allocation (which bit of the hedgerow they live in) for that very reason, despite the fact that several hundred species of moth have been recorded living in hedges. And that's moths - relatively large invertebrates. What chickens get from forage is really, really unknown, to everyone but them. Trust your chickens' judgement people! They know, we don't!

I was always skeptical about chickens eating grass but they definitely do. I have different types and the kinds that die back in the winter are not coming up yet. But there are clumps that stay green all year and those were being diligently trimmed yesterday.
Soon there will be things that wriggle and those always get priority attention.
Also yesterday they were apparently gorging in bare earth. I assume there are tiny things, maybe insect eggs, maybe seeds, maybe fungal spores, that I can’t see.
Soon the Artemesia will be coming up and i always think that their love of that may be self medicating, though i have grown to appreciate it too and am not consciously worrying about worms for myself.
Tax picture: Sylvie stuffing herself in apparently barren earth.

 

[Perris]

I was always skeptical about chickens eating grass but they definitely do. I have different types and the kinds that die back in the winter are not coming up yet. But there are clumps that stay green all year and those were being diligently trimmed yesterday.

Absolutely. Have I posted this here before? In any case it won't hurt to repost for those who missed it when this nutrition journey started all those years ago...
https://www.teagasc.ie/media/website/animals/dairy/Whats_in_Grass_Todays_Farm_May2014.pdf
They definitely prefer some varieties over others (there are some 10,000 species of grass). And they like the flowers a lot (some pollen is very nutritious apparently), so if you can live with an area of long grass, old school meadow style mowing routine, they will benefit from that too.

Also yesterday they were apparently gorging in bare earth. I assume there are tiny things, maybe insect eggs, maybe seeds, maybe fungal spores, that I can’t see.

I'm sure there's lots there that is too small or well camouflaged for my eyes to see. I've definitely seen some of them eat some funga and mycelium. They also get minerals by eating earth.

Tax: Zimmet selecting the flowers of perennial rye grass

I used to assume they were eating the grass seeds until I looked more carefully and realized that it was actually the newly opening flowers they were stripping from the stem. If I'd thought about it a bit harder I'd have realized it was too early in the year for the grass to have set seed