Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Perris]

I've managed to fall behind on my own thread.

yeh, the political diversion was all your fault, as you'd gone awol ; nature abhors a vacuum, the mice play while the cat's away, idle hands make devil's work etc., it's a very familiar pattern Glad you're back in the saddle.

As the chief offender, I think some penance is probably due. How about my cheeky chappy Talgarth?

 

[BDutch]

Thanks for the detailed explanation and apology again.
View attachment 4198253

No need to apologise. I should have. For not being more clear in the first place.

I'm trying to move Periwinkle to a better nesting site but she is being so stubborn! When I finally got her used to the nest and slid eggs under her, she took off to a different one and regathered her plastic eggs.

This is very normal behaviour for broodies.
Relocating broodies is sometimes possible but often a failure.
I did it a couple of times with a 3-5 days plan:

1. Put 1/2 a cardboard box under the broody with the same nesting material and real or fake eggs. On the same spot,
2. Let het sit for a whole day or more (16-32 hours). Maybe add a little hay during the day to make her more comfortable.
3. Move here gently with box and all in the night to an enclosed spot where she can hatch her babies and has enough room to place a food/water station, poop and take a dust bath. Make sure you can open it or make the spot bigger as needed. If moving its difficult, ask for assistance .
4. If you are sure she is fine in the new spot, you can enlarge her prison or open up if the other chickens don’t make a fuss.

In general: It seems that if the chicks are close to hatch the chance the broody leaves them , is very small.

 

[fluffycrow]

How about my cheeky chappy Talgarth?
View attachment 4198263

He looks like a school art project, in the best way possible !

 

[Molpet]

Thank you. I'd forgotten about that pic. The ladies don't huddle in that closely very often.

Congratulations

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

Overdue taxes:
BCM cockerel and my new girls

 

[Mother of Chaos]

A question for those who let their chickens forage but don’t have THAT much space (maybe @Shadrach, but the constraints there are more temporal): how do you know when they’ve pretty much cleaned out a patch? Bare soil, apparently not many invertebrates or seeds turning up when they scratch.

I’m planting cover crops to turn over for foraging, but it will be a good six weeks before they’re ready to be grazed.

 

[kattabelly]

A question for those who let their chickens forage but don’t have THAT much space (maybe @Shadrach, but the constraints there are more temporal): how do you know when they’ve pretty much cleaned out a patch? Bare soil, apparently not many invertebrates or seeds turning up when they scratch.

I’m planting cover crops to turn over for foraging, but it will be a good six weeks before they’re ready to be grazed.

At the moment I'm trying to give areas some time off, even if that's just a few days for the grass to get growing again, before they're ever really cleaned out - unless it's an area I want them to clear, like veg beds. One of the community beds was sown with green manure that's about done it's job now, so I'll be putting either the no-longer-teens or the in-betweens (Sussex & maybe the Norfolk Grey) out there in a small tractor type run for a few hours tomorrow morning. There's a few other spots they'll be put on to work soon and I'm constantly bringing stuff in to get kicked about and compost down on the run floors, so that also helps keep them supplied with plenty of greens, grass and other seeds and any insects that were either brought in on plants or attracted to the compost.

When I'm clearing new or very overgrown beds I can also lift big slabs of turf and bring those into the run for them to enjoy - with a minute or two's ground prep first, they usually last a good few days and some have even established well enough to still be growing back months later whenever they aren't being too heavily grazed or buried in leaf litter.

Come the winter, I might think about filling a few fish boxes with weed-seedy compost and letting that grow until I can swap them in & out as forage trays.

 

[BDutch]

A question for those who let their chickens forage but don’t have THAT much space

My garden isn’t very large, the chickens neither. They have access to neighbouring plots as well. But besides the run, their main forage domain is our garden.

Bc of our climate there is always something to forage. Grasses, herbs, from spring till late autumn there are plenty of insects and flowers too. And in summer there are fruits and seeds as well. I barely have bare patches outside the run. The chickens free range almost every day. Sometimes 1-2 hours, more often 3-4 and sometimes during the weekend even 8-10.

I don’t plant anything special for the chickens. There is enough for them to steal. New plants are protected with wire for a month or so.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

At the moment I'm trying to give areas some time off, even if that's just a few days for the grass to get growing again, before they're ever really cleaned out - unless it's an area I want them to clear, like veg beds. One of the community beds was sown with green manure that's about done it's job now, so I'll be putting either the no-longer-teens or the in-betweens (Sussex & maybe the Norfolk Grey) out there in a small tractor type run for a few hours tomorrow morning. There's a few other spots they'll be put on to work soon and I'm constantly bringing stuff in to get kicked about and compost down on the run floors, so that also helps keep them supplied with plenty of greens, grass and other seeds and any insects that were either brought in on plants or attracted to the compost.

When I'm clearing new or very overgrown beds I can also lift big slabs of turf and bring those into the run for them to enjoy - with a minute or two's ground prep first, they usually last a good few days and some have even established well enough to still be growing back months later whenever they aren't being too heavily grazed or buried in leaf litter.

Come the winter, I might think about filling a few fish boxes with weed-seedy compost and letting that grow until I can swap them in & out as forage trays.

Thanks! I’m figuring that green manure = cover crop. (I see both terms in US publications.)

How long did you let the community garden bed grow before it was ready to be chickened?

 

[Mother of Chaos]

My garden isn’t very large, the chickens neither. They have access to neighbouring plots as well. But besides the run, their main forage domain is our garden.

Bc of our climate there is always something to forage. Grasses, herbs, from spring till late autumn there are plenty of insects and flowers too. And in summer there are fruits and seeds as well. I barely have bare patches outside the run. The chickens free range almost every day. Sometimes 1-2 hours, more often 3-4 and sometimes during the weekend even 8-10.

I don’t plant anything special for the chickens. There is enough for them to steal. New plants are protected with wire for a month or so.

Thanks for the “month or so” information! We’re behind the curve here, because we didn’t decide to get chickens until February, and so we hadn’t started green patches in advance. This is planning for next year.

It’s pretty sobering how quickly 3 pullets can clean out a patch, and now we have 5!