Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Marie2020]

Eight miles later...
Sunday is my "official" day off. C doesn't work on Sunday so nipping out to do the chickens shouldn't be any major inconvenience especially as C lives right next to the allotments.
When I got there today the feed trays were empty, the water was filthy and under half full. The chickens were hungry.
There is a view I've heard and read that chickens will carry on eating as long as there is food in front of them.
This is in fact incorrect. A chicken will eat until their crop is full.
Yes but they are always snacking I hear people say. Not so, and one has to consider how chickens eat.
For feral chickens and jungle fowl and even free range chickens fed a couple of times a day on limited rations it is a rare occasion they will find as much food in one go as humans supply.
If one watches chickens forage they eat what they find and move on to the next promising spot. One could be forgiven for thinking they are always eating but trying to fill a crop on forage can be a full time occupation. In places where forage is good they'll forage in the morning for a couple of hours and then look for cover and rest, making occasional trips out to find a bit more. Then in the late afternoon they'll attempt to fill their crops for the night.
The chickens digestive system doesn't stop; it works day and night, the crop drip feeding the gizzard and on the the rest of the digestive tract. It works at night while they are roosting. Here's an interesting question. Does a chicken have to be awake to poop? If so, judging by some of the piles I've seen they must have a very interrupted sleep.

The advice to always have feed available comes from an understanding of a chickens digestive system but ignores the keeping circumstances. So yes, for chickens confined in a coop and run having feed constantly available is necessary but for free range chickens it's often not necessary; they will forage enough to keep food in their digestive system.

In picture 2, that's Henry bringing his hens over when I got up and opened my rucksack.View attachment 3017604View attachment 3017606View attachment 3017607View attachment 3017608View attachment 3017604View attachment 3017606View attachment 3017607View attachment 3017608

Henry is a love

 

[Marie2020]

Eight miles later...
Sunday is my "official" day off. C doesn't work on Sunday so nipping out to do the chickens shouldn't be any major inconvenience especially as C lives right next to the allotments.
When I got there today the feed trays were empty, the water was filthy and under half full. The chickens were hungry.
There is a view I've heard and read that chickens will carry on eating as long as there is food in front of them.
This is in fact incorrect. A chicken will eat until their crop is full.
Yes but they are always snacking I hear people say. Not so, and one has to consider how chickens eat.
For feral chickens and jungle fowl and even free range chickens fed a couple of times a day on limited rations it is a rare occasion they will find as much food in one go as humans supply.
If one watches chickens forage they eat what they find and move on to the next promising spot. One could be forgiven for thinking they are always eating but trying to fill a crop on forage can be a full time occupation. In places where forage is good they'll forage in the morning for a couple of hours and then look for cover and rest, making occasional trips out to find a bit more. Then in the late afternoon they'll attempt to fill their crops for the night.
The chickens digestive system doesn't stop; it works day and night, the crop drip feeding the gizzard and on the the rest of the digestive tract. It works at night while they are roosting. Here's an interesting question. Does a chicken have to be awake to poop? If so, judging by some of the piles I've seen they must have a very interrupted sleep.

The advice to always have feed available comes from an understanding of a chickens digestive system but ignores the keeping circumstances. So yes, for chickens confined in a coop and run having feed constantly available is necessary but for free range chickens it's often not necessary; they will forage enough to keep food in their digestive system.

In picture 2, that's Henry bringing his hens over when I got up and opened my rucksack.View attachment 3017604View attachment 3017606View attachment 3017607View attachment 3017608View attachment 3017604View attachment 3017606View attachment 3017607View attachment 3017608

It's so incredibly sad for these chickens that C cannot try too feed and change their water . God knows how they survived before you got there.

 

[Molpet]

It's so incredibly sad for these chickens that C cannot try too feed and change their water . God knows how they survived before you got there.

At least she asked for help, gotta give whoever put up the notice credit for recognizing a problem

 

[Marie2020]

At least she asked for help, gotta give whoever put up the notice credit for recognizing a problem

Help? Help is an occasional thing, this person has left all of the responsibilities on Sharach. Maybe she should ask for shift helpers, so they never go hungry and don't have to keep drinking filthy water. As it stands right now during the summer they won't even have water at all if shadach isn't there

 

[Molpet]

Help? Help is an occasional thing, this person has left all of the responsibilities on Sharach. Maybe she should ask for shift helpers, so they never go hungry and don't have to keep drinking filthy water. As it stands right now during the summer they won't even have water at all if shadach isn't there

They could have not put up the notice, thinking they might get ridiculed for the situation.

 

[Shadrach]

Shad, I am curious. Why would you consider grass to be ‘forage’ and therefore freely available (assuming free ranging), but Kale and cabbage are ‘treats’ and should therefore be limited?
I also have definitive proof that chickens poop while asleep from sitting in the Chicken Palace two nights ago in order to catch a sample from Maggie to share with the vet. There is no doubt in my mind that the monster sample I nabbed for the vet was delivered by a deeply sleeping hen.

I consider anything the chickens find for themselves as forage. I don't and never have fed them grass. Treats are anything I give them apart from their commenrcial feed.

 

[Ribh]

Help? Help is an occasional thing, this person has left all of the responsibilities on Sharach. Maybe she should ask for shift helpers, so they never go hungry and don't have to keep drinking filthy water. As it stands right now during the summer they won't even have water at all if shadach isn't there

They might have to invest in a large waterer, one that will last for several days, so that if a day gets missed it's not an all out disaster.

 

[Marie2020]

They could have not put up the notice, thinking they might get ridiculed for the situation.

I'm no ridiculing her simply making a suggestion. She needs more than one person, because she's is not coping and those chickens are being severely neglected

 

[Marie2020]

They might have to invest in a large waterer, one that will last for several days, so that if a day gets missed it's not an all out disaster.

Good thinking and the same for a feed . They still need checking out so someone else looking in would my advice

 

[Shadrach]

When the ex-batts arrived we were feeding them twice a day and we really thought they were gluttons. They threw themselves on the feed to the point of jumping in our arms to have a go at it first. They always began screaming for hunger an hour before the second feeding. We were kind of worried. People told us to try to let them full feeders all day to eat as they would, and see how this went. This is what we do now, they waste a little more, but they're not worrying that they will be dying of hunger and acting like gluttons. In fact they usually don't eat for most of the afternoon, until an hour or so before bed.

. Yes, I was going to make the same kind of comment. Not the same circumstances but I have seen sleeping hens poop, definitely!

What I have always wondered, is whether egg laying woke them up. We had two hens that used to lay during the night for months , it was a pain because the eggs got poop all over.

I have had hens lay in the middle of the night but not from the roost. They few times it has happened they have come down from the roost in the dark and stumbled their way to the nest boxes.

Pooping in ones sleep would seem to be a fairly unique skill. I don't think I shall be trying to aquire it.

One might assume that in the above cases, pooping is an invountary action over which a chicken has no control. However, this is apprently untrue because a broody hen can control when she poops. (?)