Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

These are a couple of pictures of the fence where I hope you can see the floppy construction and the overhang at the top. It looks a bit scrappy but it works. There is a farm not far from where I am that uses the same system but the construction is a lot better.

The height before the overhang is recommended to be 2 metres. A better constructed fence of this type would have the stock net tighter and the chicken mesh looser at the bottom. At the 2 meter point the over hang would be fixed to battens with an angle of 45 degrees to the upright post with a bit hanging downward.

 

[Ribh]

These are a couple of pictures of the fence where I hope you can see the floppy construction and the overhang at the top. It looks a bit scrappy but it works. There is a farm not far from where I am that uses the same system but the construction is a lot better.
View attachment 2913278View attachment 2913279View attachment 2913280

The height before the overhang is recommended to be 2 metres. A better constructed fence of this type would have the stock net tighter and the chicken mesh looser at the bottom. At the 2 meter point the over hang would be fixed to battens with an angle of 45 degrees to the upright post with a bit hanging downward.

This type of construct used to be very common out here too ~ obviously brought out from the Old Country. It's cheap & works well @ keeping the chickens in. Not so good @ keeping foxes out.

 

[alwaystj9]

Is the overhang s'posed to flop out or in?
I had a place that had a tight but inward lean, probably a bit less than 45 degrees. I think it was designed to keep dogs(not sure, maybe goats) from climbing up and over.
It's not a bad idea.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

I didn't get any notifs!

Here's Westeros, a Phoenix, and his son from this spring for my taxes

 

[RoyalChick]

Is the overhang s'posed to flop out or in?
I had a place that had a tight but inward lean, probably a bit less than 45 degrees. I think it was designed to keep dogs(not sure, maybe goats) from climbing up and over.
It's not a bad idea.

I am more familiar with it leaning out to prevent predators climbing in. Doesn't work for raccoons of course but might with foxes.

 

[Ribh]

I am more familiar with it leaning out to prevent predators climbing in. Doesn't work for raccoons of course but might with foxes.

Without a skirt the foxes just go under.

 

[MaryJanet]

These are a couple of pictures of the fence where I hope you can see the floppy construction and the overhang at the top. It looks a bit scrappy but it works. There is a farm not far from where I am that uses the same system but the construction is a lot better.
View attachment 2913278View attachment 2913279View attachment 2913280

The height before the overhang is recommended to be 2 metres. A better constructed fence of this type would have the stock net tighter and the chicken mesh looser at the bottom. At the 2 meter point the over hang would be fixed to battens with an angle of 45 degrees to the upright post with a bit hanging downward.

When we were kids, Dad built the chicken run with a floppy overhang.

 

[RoyalChick]

Without a skirt the foxes just go under.

Yes for sure! But I thought in an earlier post I saw Shad putting skirt in or maybe repairing existing skirt.

 

[Ribh]

Yes for sure! But I thought in an earlier post I saw Shad putting skirt in or maybe repairing existing skirt.

Sorry, I was speaking generally from my observations of how it is used here.

 

[Shadrach]

The cost.

Each hen eats from 80 grams to 100 grams of feed a day if contained and fed only commercial feed.
For the original 24 hens and Henry the rooster that’s 2.4 kilos of feed per day. You could probably manage with 3 x 20 kilo bags per month and feed everyone adequately

A decent layers feed costs about £16.00 for 20 kilos. That’s £48.00 per month.

There are the five geese as well. Each goose needs about 200 grams a day. That’s a kilo a day for the geese and that’s another 30 kilo per months. This adds another £24.00 to the feed bill.

Total feed bill then is roughly £72.00 a month.

I’m not going to tell you what C replied when I asked what the feed bill per month was but it wasn’t what I’ve calculated above.

There is lots of stuff that the “rescue centres” don’t tell you when they ask you to take the chickens they rescue.
Because these hens have has their beaks butchered they don’t have a point at the end of their beak.
Despite all the nonsense they write about using DE which even in the best research is only partially effective which is what they recommend for mites etc, the simple fact is chickens use their beaks to remove mites and lice. Dust bathing is for another purpose. So, it seems that the rescue centers, at least from what I’ve read on how to keep Ex Batts do not know that chickens don’t dust bath to remove mites, DE not only doesn’t really work, it’s bad for the keepers lungs and it’s bad for the chickens lungs.

All the hens in the two batches that C has taken in were according to her missing over half their feathers and teeming with lice and mites.

Again, according to C no explicit advice was given about quarantining these hens. While it is true that virtually all battery hens are vaccinated for some diseases there are an awful lot of diseases for which there is no vaccine. I haven’t been able to find any information on any of the rescue sites that explicitly states what these hens have been vaccinated for. Lots of people as we all know from reading BYC just put newly acquired hens in with their existing flock without any sort of effective quarantine. This is exactly what has happened here. I’ve been told they were kept an eye on for a few days at most and were contained in the steel meshed structure you can see in some of the pictures of the allotment run.

Basically any disease that the EX batts had/have will in all probability have been passed to the existing chickens.

So, every chicken that arrived here from the rescue centre needed ridding of mites and lice. Getting hold of an effective pesticide that is licenced for chickens in the UK is almost impossible now. You need to know what chemicals can do the job and at what dosages. Then you need to find a product that meets these requirements. Most people, especially those new to chickens who have gone awwww, wouldn’t it be nice to rescue and Ex Batt have no idea about these things.

The hens will never be able to clean themselves properly as long as their beaks don’t have points. Their beaks do grow slowly but not necessarily to a point.

To keep these hens free of mites and lice the keeper will need to do the job for any that get a major infestation.

With the tribes in Catalonia mites and lice was a rare problem and generally restricted to the older generation and the sick. Healthy chickens kept in appropriate condition tend to not suffer from a major mite and lice problems in my experience and the experience of many others.

These are not healthy hens. It’s going to cost you money to fight the parasites. I’ve got through one bottle of permethrin in less than a month and it costs £12.00 a bottle.

If, like many do, one gets an Ex Battery hen, or two, as pets at 18 months old (72 weeks seems to be the standard disposal age) then depending on breed their average life expectancy is from 3 to 4 years, you may have them alive and healthy for a further 18 months to 2 years. Yes there are exceptions but from what I’ve read the life expectancy of a Ex Battery Red Sex Link is about 4 years. The Golden Comet, a popular production breed here in the UK the average seems to be around 3 years.

They tend to get reproductive disorders between 2 and 3 years old. Some of course fare better than others and in statistics there are always the outliers who bend the bell curve. So for accuracies sake take the life span numbers as the median ages.

Just as a comment about my experiences with chickens it takes me a couple of years just to get to know a chicken properly. Ideally, I need to see how it acts through a full set of seasons, a moult and changes in tribe/flock dynamics. With roosters it’s at 18 months before they stop acting like idiots and grow up properly.

So, you’ve got your Ex Battery hens. You’ve bought a nice little coop for them. You’ve bought the best feed you can find. You’ve dealt with the mites and lice and spent hours on the internet trying to sift through all the bad advice. You’ve struggled to learn about the interminable problems they seem to have, fallen in love with the creatures, maybe the kids have to and they start getting ill and dying…….