Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[LaFleche]

Yep!

This lot hatched in the incubator (set up for visiting nieces to watch hatch, chicks came slightly early). Broodies had been broody 5 weeks, 4 weeks, and 2.5 weeks, no successful babies (2 tried, never made it out of the shell). Incubator hatched july 1-3 (wee hours).

This morning.

Just love it!

 

[BDutch]

But I dislike it when people use the term hybrid when refering to chickens with mixed parentage (layers, broilers or others). To me a hybrid is a mix between seperate species like the liger or spalding peafowl.

A bit late after all the Welsumer/summer discussions and Amsterdamned crap . But I don’t understand part of your objection.

The industrial type of chickens are not real breeds, but go by a name of the ‘manufacturer’ or in general are referred to as laying hybrids. Its not impossible to breed with them bc these are special mixes and only give the right results (>320 egg a year in the first 18 months) with a certain type of rooster (seamon) x certain type of hen.

Is the name hybrid wrong for these laying hybrids too?

The banyard chickens are often referred to as barnyard mixes. Not barnyard hybrids.

 

[BDutch]

Finally catching up. Tax time.
A gif made from a short video.

And a few photos of Janice, behaving strange and restless. Pre-broody?

 

[Molpet]

If you haven't already, this pic would be great in the caption contest.

Great for the caption contest submission!

I took your suggestion and entered it

Post in thread 'BYC Poultry Caption Contest Photo Submission - Thread #12' https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...to-submission-thread-12.1654999/post-28711110

 

[Perris]

I came across this article while looking for recommendations for feed forage mixes (seeds for planting) for poultry, instead of studying for a midterm, as I'm also not doing now.

It's a slightly older article (2009.) It somewhat confusingly refers to North America while using British spellings and including a few mentions of UK studies, so I'm assuming the writer is Canadian. A Greener World has several regions including US/Canada, UK, and South Africa.

I thought it had some interesting information about supporting free-ranging poultry - benefits, things to consider and plan for, specific forage plants, timing to release the Kraken allow the chickens to graze, and so forth.

I'd love to read any comments!

https://agreenerworld.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/TAFS-6-Range-Management-in-Poultry-v1.pdf

thanks for this. I tracked down the PhD on the preferred species and their nutritional value: It's here if anyone else is interested in 147 pages on the topic

 

[Mother of Chaos]

thanks for this. I tracked down the PhD on the preferred species and their nutritional value: It's here if anyone else is interested in 147 pages on the topic

Haha, ummm... later!

 

[Mother of Chaos]

thanks for this. I tracked down the PhD on the preferred species and their nutritional value: It's here if anyone else is interested in 147 pages on the topic

Haha, ummm... later!

- in fact, I do plan to dig through this. I have a bag of Cover and Color cover crop seed mix that I *think* is safe for chickens, and I’m trying to figure how to get a cover forage crop rotation going.

I’m especially interested in the whole lupin thing. I’m familiar with lupines (our spelling) as ornamentals, so it’s always fun to find a legume that will do double duty! chomp chomp

Right now I have to get through Rousseau and Sor Juana and Locke and the Federalist Papers and Olympe de Gouges for tomorrow.

 

[Shadrach]

I'd love to read any comments!

Someone explain to me what is wrong with these people. It's yet one more writer/academic who it seems has read maybe a lot of studies on this topic but wouldn't know a chicken if they fell over one. They seem to have got their ruminants and their fowl all confused.

The section about chickens requiring cover must surely be obvious to anyone who has studied chickens at any depth. In fact, one could probably deduced as much just from looking at google maps and reading the idiot information box that often pops up on the screen. It should be obvious having found out where chickens come from that they're jungle creatures. No they haven't willingly adapted to a cage and a bit of lawn.
I shouldn't get too sarcastic but here in Bristol at the zoo it took them many years to work out that polar bears travel miles over snow and ice each day and were after all not suitable for a concrete enclosure a few hundred square metres in size,

There seems to be a similar problem with the chicken, not just with the commercial concerns but the backyard keepers as well. I'm not throwing rocks at anyone. I'm just trying to point out a fact; a chicken has a natural range given the right conditions. It's not ten square feet.
Put a lot of chickens on a parcel of land and there is some proportional area requirements.
Most of us one this thread I think have seen what half a dozen chickens will do to a small back yard if left to range on it and the yard isn't managed with chickens in mind. A commercial concern may have a couple of thousand so called free range hens mostly. Let me show you.

Yes, it's a vast improvement on the cage system. Guess what one of the problems with this system is; the keepers say many of the chickens won't go out there. I wonder if it's anything to do with it not being much like a jungle out there and they are sitting ducks for any and every predator that can climb deal with the fence!
The cost and planning to provide anything like sufficient jungle like cover is huge. I can't see much changing in a hurry.

This bit has left me almost speechless on a few threads on nutrition. Sure, chickens eat grass, they eat other stuff that grows on the surface. So what about the lice, slugs, mice, roots, grubs, compost, mycelium, etc etc? All the chickens I've known have scratched and dug and eaten as much if not more than the vegetation they grazed on.
Soil quality is a major issue in an heavily used area of ground. Most farmers farmers know to move cattle and sheep for examples on to new pasture if they are contained. When it comes to chickens a bare patch of ground year after year is apparently fine.

I may have missed it but I don't recall reading the most important bit about ranging chickens, they get the right type of exercise for their species and they get this from searching for food.

 

[Shadrach]

Yep!

This lot hatched in the incubator (set up for visiting nieces to watch hatch, chicks came slightly early). Broodies had been broody 5 weeks, 4 weeks, and 2.5 weeks, no successful babies (2 tried, never made it out of the shell). Incubator hatched july 1-3 (wee hours).

This morning.

Loved the videos. Great hackle flash in the last one.

 

[Shadrach]

Three hours today. Silly hot in the early afternoon but while I was there the clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped from 30C to about 24C, Wings went back down, panting stopped and we were all a lot more comfortable.
If the Met Office is right the top temperature should be around 23C with a stiff breeze. I'll be able to get something done.
Picked 5 courgettes today. I may have just got them in the ground in time. The Fennel I planted in the extended run has bolted so I need to get the worst of the weeds out around the plants hoping some seeds will drop and grow there. I've done the same with the St Johns Wort and a couple of other plants I don't know the names of but the chickens ate the seeds and dug around the roots.
Mow and Sylph are doing okay. Mow could be a bit kinder to Sylph but that's how it is. They are at least moving around as a pair now. Sylph spotted a Red Kite high in the clouds again today and went straight under my chair. Mow looked but didn't move from her bath.