Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Mother of Chaos]

Light rain by the time I got to the field. It blew over after half an hour. I went late because of the rain so two hours today.

I'm going to go for Glais if that's okay @Perris. I think he's a good looking bird and hopefully Mow and Sylph will agree. He's a little older than I would have liked but hopefully when the hormones bite he will have learnt enough with you to back up and be polite.

One concern is moult for Sylph and Mow can't be far away. It will be Sylph's first and Mow had a rough time with her first moult and it remains to be seen how she copes with her second. Glais will probably want to mate by that time.

I'll PM you to make arrangements.
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Yay, Glais!!

 

[Perris]

Light rain by the time I got to the field. It blew over after half an hour. I went late because of the rain so two hours today.

I'm going to go for Glais if that's okay @Perris. I think he's a good looking bird and hopefully Mow and Sylph will agree. He's a little older than I would have liked but hopefully when the hormones bite he will have learnt enough with you to back up and be polite.

One concern is moult for Sylph and Mow can't be far away. It will be Sylph's first and Mow had a rough time with her first moult and it remains to be seen how she copes with her second. Glais will probably want to mate by that time.

I'll PM you to make arrangements.
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Glais is good. No rush here if you want to defer till the ladies have moulted.

 

[Shadrach]

Could you all wait until molt is done?

I don't think we can. The boys would be even older and may have started scrapping. It's a total PITA with just a couple fighting. Perris has got nine.
While I'm sure Perris isn't concerned about this part it needs taking into account. The boys need to eat and they eat quite a lot. If one is going to harvest them then one can view it as an investment. If one is re-homing then get them out as soon after Mum stops mothering is a sensible strategy.
They won't have become too accustomed to routines and environment and their siblings are competitors.

At the field Mow and Sylph are becoming more attached to me. Yes it's lovely that they trust me but I'm not a rooster and couldn't even begin to provide what a good rooster does. The more attached to me they become, for more I'm going to be viewed as competition to any new male arrivals. There is no getting around this. It's a real problem that may not surface for some months, depending on the maturity of the male arrivals.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Random update on The Littles.

Tessa on the left, 15 weeks, and Willow on the right (whose legs have in fact turned willow green), 13 weeks.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I don't think we can. The boys would be even older and may have started scrapping. It's a total PITA with just a couple fighting. Perris has got nine.
While I'm sure Perris isn't concerned about this part it needs taking into account. The boys need to eat and they eat quite a lot. If one is going to harvest them then one can view it as an investment. If one is re-homing then get them out as soon after Mum stops mothering is a sensible strategy.
They won't have become too accustomed to routines and environment and their siblings are competitors.

At the field Mow and Sylph are becoming more attached to me. Yes it's lovely that they trust me but I'm not a rooster and couldn't even begin to provide what a good rooster does. The more attached to me they become, for more I'm going to be viewed as competition to any new male arrivals. There is no getting around this. It's a real problem that may not surface for some months, depending on the maturity of the male arrivals.

Do we think that since Mow and Sylph are mature hens, and have had experience with a rooster (Henry), they would do any necessary training with Glais?

I don’t remember how old Glais is and whether his brain has returned to his body yet.

 

[Shadrach]

Just a somewhat random comment about bringing back rare breeds. Someone else posted a similar comment, and I read back a bit on this thread and didn’t see it, so apologies if I’m reposting.

A huge problem with rescuing a species or sub-species from near-extinction is that we generally wait too long. When there are few individuals left to restart the breed, we are looking at a genetic bottleneck: where after a natural disaster or some other event, there are very few individuals left to breed from.

Unless these individuals are scattered around the world, the chances are that they are closely related to one another (inbred), and using them as breeding stock increases the likelihood of concentrating lethal and other harmful genetic defects in their offspring.

If we want to maintain their specific genetic contribution to chickendom, a strong argument can be made for cross-breeding them with other breeds (subspecies), rather than trying to keep the line “pure,” which just continues to weaken the bloodline.

@Perris ‘s breeding program with the aim of increasing genetic diversity is far more important than trying to preserve unique individuals of a traditional but fading breed, sad as it is to say.

I agree in general. I've never really been interested in all this SOP stuff.
It's really only backyard style chicken keepers that keep these breeds going.
They're not usually of commercial interest and in all probability not much like the original breed in some aspects after a couple of hundred or more years.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I agree in general. I've never really been interested in all this SOP stuff.
It's really only backyard style chicken keepers that keep these breeds going.
They're not usually of commercial interest and in all probability not much like the original breed in some aspects after a couple of hundred or more years.

I have to do a presentation for a class on a vaguely-related ecology topic, and mine deals with “un-breeding”: reversing the uber-specialized characteristics in so many chicken breeds in order to come up with a more natural (whatever that is) polygenic chicken that is better adapted to free-range conditions, especially predator loads.

 

[Shadrach]

I have to do a presentation for a class on a vaguely-related ecology topic, and mine deals with “un-breeding”: reversing the uber-specialized characteristics in so many chicken breeds in order to come up with a more natural (whatever that is) polygenic chicken that is better adapted to free-range conditions, especially predator loads.

There's a problem with such ventures, the world, environment, predators, edibles etc varies from region to region. Letting what is there already intermingle and sort their own survival rate out through trial and error has worked wonders in the past. It's humans attempting to manage directly or through mismanagement of other areas relevant to a breeds survival that's causing more problems than it's solving.

 

[MrsNorthie]

The more attached to me they become, for more I'm going to be viewed as competition to any new male arrivals. There is no getting around this. It's a real problem that may not surface for some months, depending on the maturity of the male arrivals.

I am sure that you will overcome any rivalry issue.You are the rooster whisperer.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

There's a problem with such ventures, the world, environment, predators, edibles etc varies from region to region. Letting what is there already intermingle and sort their own survival rate out through trial and error has worked wonders in the past. It's humans attempting to manage directly or through mismanagement of other areas relevant to a breeds survival that's causing more problems than it's solving.

I’m thinking of @Perris ‘s and @No Coop No Problem ’s breeding experiments.

But I do see how, in a perfect setting, just sitting back and letting things happen makes a lot of sense.

I’m just puttering along with my Flock of Five, pondering their individual strengths and weaknesses, and wondering who would be most likely to make it through the Chicken Apocalypse.