Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Perris]

What sort of fig tree is it and how long did it take to bear fruit?

Brown Turkey; no idea but it's been fruiting at least 30 years.

 

[kattabelly]

I'd expect Brown Turkey to produce at least one or two figs the year after you got it, or even in the same year depending on when you got it and what state it was in, unless you started off with a really tiny little twig of a tree. Should be hitting its stride by years 3-5 if it's happy.

My mum has one that's been sat by her door for several years now while she decides where to plant it and she's had a few fruit off that despite not doing anything to care for it beyond potting it on to (iirc) a 7.5 or 10L pot.

 

[MrsNorthie]

I don't own a TV. I never have.

I am still hopelessly addicted to sport, so since it is here, it is just on, or the music. I drive The Egg Thief crazy with music, I have everything from bag pipes to metal and sometimes, just play the play list so that almost anything could play next, like lucky dip, I could go from Barrington Phelong's theme for Morse to Drowning Pool, Bodies, so he puts the TV on in self-defense.

 

[Perris]

In my experience the keepers are a lot more bothered by the feather loss caused through mating than the hens are.

that's my experience too.

Some hen's feathers seem to more fragile than others.

Indeed. The lavender gene in particular seems to have some impact there. On the other hand, the one of my hens that suffers the most damage to the feathers on her back is one of the Penedesenca sisters; the three of them must share a lot of genes, but only one of them gets a bare back. I think it's cos she likes all the boys

Nature has the mating business sorted in so much as the rooster of the same breed as the hens is going to be the right size and weight for her.

That may be true of birds in general, and jungle fowl, but nature has had little to do with creating most modern chicken breeds. The 'utilitarian dual breeds' for example have been selected deliberately by their developers to produce larger males for the table, and smaller hens as economical layers, both emerging from the same clutch of eggs with two different destinies depending on their sex.

Elephant seals are an extreme example of sexual dimorphism in other phyla, where nature has selected males so large they threaten the life of the females, and thus have reached their limit.

I agree that it's a good idea to have a roo not significantly bigger and heavier than the hens he will mate. But I think there are more and sometimes better options to achieve it than choosing one of the same breed.

 

[BDutch]

I think Chuck is too extreme potentially

I am curious if you have plans with him. Especially after reading the replies from Shad and Perris.
Keeping him doesnt sound like the best option to me if he hurts the hens beyond feather loss. Maybe try to rehome him to someone who has a flock with bigger hens?

So I'll get up at dawn and butcher, dad will build a fire for the parts we don't eat, and in a few days everyone will settle back in.
I used my new net to catch them, so much easier considering my neck injury!

I can pick up my chickens easily when they are roosted. I even could about a month after I broke my shoulder last year. Why not take them of the roost at night and crate them out of sight till the next day? Taking all 4 may be a bit disturbing but if you take one or two out at a time its the easiest way to get the job done.
Btw, the parts you don’t eat are good food for the chickens.

Up on the roost at two weeks!

Beautiful photo. Looks like a painting.

 

[Perris]

Visby is trying to crow; sounds like someone scraping their nails down a blackboard [it occurs to me that that might not mean anything to the younger generations here; think 'horrible sound' ]. He'll be 14 weeks old tomorrow.

 

[fluffycrow]

I just harvested my first fig of the year (having spotted a blackbird tucking into one with gusto); they are ripening at least 2 weeks earlier than hitherto, thanks to the good spring we had this year I guess. I only recently learned that a fig is an inside-out flower (long noticed the weird inside, but never really stopped to consider why it was that way), and that it's a really important fruit tree as a lot of birds and mammals eat them.

Wow, we’ve been harvesting ours for a week or more already. Lucia is already loving the fallen figs that are becoming more and more abundant. Kolovos would have already led the group to this new food source, but these boys do not have enough experience yet.

I hope your group are also enjoying this new sweet treat

 

[MrsNorthie]

Visby is trying to crow; sounds like someone scraping their nails down a blackboard [it occurs to me that that might not mean anything to the younger generations here; think 'horrible sound' ]. He'll be 14 weeks old tomorrow.

I love watching them, as they first discover their little voices. It is so cute that the cuteness out weighs the quality of the sound. ;-)

 

[fluffycrow]

I had a whole reply post ready for thistlewick, but seeing as there have already been far more informative replies, I’ll say this.

Feather damage alone would not have worried me so much as the hen’s behaviour around Big Red did. Even under Kolovos, some hens would have feather damage. But none refused Kolovos as they do these boys, and Kolovos never mated aggressively.

As both Perris and Shad have written before me, the size of the hens in comparison to their male is also important. Big Red’s previous flock, which consisted of him and two Brahma hens, never had issues with bare backs. The bantam group also doesn’t have any. Now, Big Red as well as Elrond are far too big for some of the hens. It’s not accidental that the largest hens here have the least amount of feather damage. Kolovos was also a big boy. Here is a size comparison, a photo of him next to the second biggest hen of the group

. His favourite hen was tiny. Neither hens had feather damage.

Food also plays a role. The group are consuming two cans of dog food a day to keep with their protein demands, and some days it’s still not enough.

Feathers will tell you far less than the hens themselves. If it progresses to injuries, then yes, that is not normal. Staying away from their rooster is not normal. Not being able to eat in peace because being called over for food means that you might get forcefully mated is not normal

 

[thistlewick]

Everyone is assuming (naturally, I guess) that Chuck is HUGE.

He is actually smaller than the hens he's causing feather loss on. I picked him because he was small and tidy. He's an Easter Egger, and the size of a regular hen. He is smaller than Blanche, the Buff Orpington who is so slow she can never get away from him and he is smaller than Dorothy the Blue Laced Red Wyandotte who is also so slow she cannot get away from him. And these are the two with the most feather loss.

I just read a article/thread on this forum by another Rooster expert - they said that hens who like their rooster should squat for him when he initiates.

HAH, well, none -- absolutely ZERO of the hens squat for Chuck. He has to chase them down, grabbing them and forcing himself on. NONE of them squat. I didn't think anything of it. Which is interesting because before we introduced him (we had separated all the boys for months before choosing one) ALL of the girls squatted for me and my husband when we just walked by.

Most of the girls run away and he has to surprise them by stalking from behind.

Now he does have cuddlers on the roost at night, 2 others, Easter Eggers, interestingly. (Pudding and Custard, and mostly Custard)

You know what's interesting, and curious about @Shadrach 's hypothesis? Neither of them have feather loss. What is also true about Pudding and Custard is they are fast, small, and wily and *independent* and do not spend all day with the flock at all. They 100% do their own thing all day long.

So that could mean that they don't get 'caught' by Chuck very often, so no feather loss. Whereas poor Blanche and Dorothy, more 'typical' chickens who are not independent and also very big and very slow, are more easily caught, so overmated and thus; feather loss. Chocolate is now showing signs of it and she's the third largest chicken and about the same size as Chuck.

Also with regards to 'squatting' - I have observed a couple of hens squat for Oscar.

Since I have 24 acres (the chickens are left to their own devices and on it, use about a 6 acre circle of it at the very most) it will be also interesting to see what happens.

I have chicks who are 4-5 weeks old and have been brooded on the floor, with everyone, since 1 week old, I let them out. None of the other hens or cockerels coming up care or do anything to them. They are all alive. In fact I've done this in successive waves, so there has been chicks growing up with teens/adults/adolescents all spring and summer long. Everyone's still alive. For most of them, there was no broody to protect them. They did fine with their 'safe' space only they could retreat to -- interesting thing??? They barely use it. They LOVED being with everyone.

Most of the time, when I go out in the heat of the day, everyone who is still young enough to still hang by the hen house, even though their ages range from baby to 10-12 weeks old (this seems the age when they begin to range far), they are cuddled together sunning or dust bathing. All ages together.

I chalk this up to the fact that they have space. They could leave the run area, the door is wide open. They don't. They hang out together against the Big Scary World until they are 'big' enough to go with the grown ups.

Anyway regarding Chuck; regarding my flock in general; I could throw a rock and hit 5 people willing to kill a rooster for a meal, so finding someone to take any unwanted roosters off my hands is brainless and easy. I just don't want to do that. I have a contact who re-homes and just keeps bachelor flocks on her property. She and I have already set up an agreement that she will take any spares I don't want.

But I don't want to arbitrarily toss boys who don't need to be tossed. But I will need to get down to 5 boys. Only 4 of the ~13 boys I have right now are sexually mature. I want to see how Batman, Miss Pecky and Cocoa behave.

I will continue to assess the watch the featherless girls, I will assess and watch the new cockerels coming up and see if anyone actually prefers (squats) to them.

I don't know if anyone has bothered to read my thread but I keep it quite updated with my situation and I have an entire bachelor set up already. It's just close (I mean, within 500 ft) to a neighbor and I feel terrible about the crowing at 4am lol