Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Three hours today. Dry and warmish until dusk.
Henry started off like this.

Not only have I been bringing him soft nutritious food, I've been massaging his windpipe and crop and what I can reach leading to his gizzard. Ten minutes on my lap being fussed over, prodded and poked he went off to join the hens.

 

[fuzzi]

Three hours today. Dry and warmish until dusk.
Henry started off like this.
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Not only have I been bringing him soft nutritious food, I've been massaging his windpipe and crop and what I can reach leading to his gizzard. Ten minutes on my lap being fussed over, prodded and poked he went off to join the hens.
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Henry needs a little TLC.

 

[fuzzi]

Henry needs a little TLC.

TLC = Tender Loving Care

 

[ChaosMom]

Henry needs a little TLC.

Looks like he got his late-afternoon Businessman’s Massage.

 

[RoyalChick]

I've thought for a while now that it's the type of plant that interests the chickens because different types of plant attract different bugs and mycelium. The chickens aren't just vandels.
Another point is if one has enough room and and healthy amount of shrubs, plants and bushes and of course the right number of chickens for a given area most things will survive.

I tend to agree - but the situation of a new planting is different because in that case what is drawing the chickens is the disturbed soil. When mine dug up the little tree they had no interest in the tree itself but they had a wonderful time with the loose soil.

 

[Shadrach]

I have through sheer chance discovered a mostly environmentally friendly form of rat control.
There is no way to rid rats from the field and to do so would be short sighted anyway. The local foxes and I dare say other wild creatures hunt the rats and if there are no rats to eat then chicken may seem a reasonable alternative.
I clean the droppings from the coop daily and in the past, I have put these in a bin in the run to compost. That bin has been full for a while now and I've been putting the droppings in the plastic buckets you can see a coupel of in the picture.
I leave food in the coop overnight, close to 400 grams of it. I do this so they have food in the morning and hopefully between this and the evening feed plus treats and forage they get enough to eat every day. Some of the food I leave in the coop gets spilt onto the floor and becomes contaminated with the droppings making unfit for the chickens to eat.

Over the last few weeks I've been watching the rats climb into these bins and pick out the spilt feed from the droppings. Big win just on that because the fewer seeds there are in the droppings the less likely they are to cause a problem when the droppings are dug into the veg plots.
Given I cant get rid of the rats this sytem has meant from what I've seen over the last few months is instead of heading into the chicken run looking for food the rats go to the bins, not all, but most. I was watching them today.
I've had five rats drown in the bins since I started using them so the bins are laso help to thin the rat population down without the use of poisons.

 

[Shadrach]

I tend to agree - but the situation of a new planting is different because in that case what is drawing the chickens is the disturbed soil. When mine dug up the little tree they had no interest in the tree itself but they had a wonderful time with the loose soil.

indeed, what chicken can resist a patch of recently turned earth.

 

[ChaosMom]

indeed, what chicken can resist a patch of recently turned earth.

 

[MrsNorthie]

So why didn't they let the traffic already on the stretch that was to be closed actually complete their transit before shutting the exits? (shut the entrance to stop more traffic coming in and divert, but let those already there, like your bus, through, before closing it completely). Reminds me of the many times Gwent police have completely shut the M4 because of an accident. No consideration given to the consequences of their actions on huge numbers of other people, including those responding to their own emergencies without all the fanfare.

Commonsense isn't as common as it used to be. :-(

 

[MrsNorthie]

Henry started off like this.

He looks so uncomfortable. He needs some really warm summery days and sunshine.