Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

This is a well known biological process called reversion, or often spoken of as "reverting to wild-type." Given enough generations, your chickens would have continued to have genetic drift back towards a more Red Jungle Fowl type of chicken, simply because you stopped selecting who bred who, and let the chickens decide themselves. This happens in shockingly few generations in feral pigs.

This happens because, as mentioned previously in this thread, much of selective breeding doesn't eliminate wild-type gene sequences, it just selects for inhibitors or modifiers.

PS... LOVE Chicken Run.

This seems to be known by many of the chicken keepers I know but mention this on BYC and other forums and you get told you're talking nonsense.
What there isn't much research on is the reversibility of the egg laying capacity as in how many generations it would take to return to say under 100 eggs per year from a 250 eggs a year hen, and more importantly, would the lifespan increase as a result of this.
I managed to reduce the egg laying by a number of methods such as letting broody hens sit until their egg laying cycle switched off which could add as much as another six weeks of no egg laying each year.
Also, as time went by and of course as the hens got older egg production for some fell below 100 a year at two years and older.

 

[Shadrach]

Tax.

 

[Windrider]

Most villages I’ve visited in Asia still have chickens running around free range as do the villages in Africa my niece has visited with her studies and even here on BYC the occasional poster from Iran, or China shows up and posts pictures of chickens living much as I’ve described above.

I spent several years of my young adulthood sailing around the South Pacific and every island had chickens kept as you described, brought there by the Polynesians. They were very much like game fowl, not very large or meaty, but not needing much or any husbandry either. Probably not many predators on those islands (I'm thinking maybe only skuas and frigate birds).

At the other extreme, many years ago in Los Angeles, a big rig carrying a load of chickens (I think they were leghorns - some battery breed), crashed on the 10 Freeway. Many of the chickens escaped and for a couple decades, the famed wild chickens of the Santa Monica Freeway lived and reproduced on the sides of one of the busiest roadways in America, foraging in places as diverse as MacDonalds and high end restaurants, and in the planted areas of parking lots and the freeway verges itself.

My question is that if battery breeds supposedly don't go broody or learn survival skills, how did these chickens keep going? I live here and I saw them with chicks.

 

[Shadrach]

The next thing we know about is the temperature/climate comfort range of chickens. I've stated before, there is no such creature as a cold hardy chicken. I can say this with some confidence because there haven't been any consistant measurable changes in the chickens physiology that might influence this to any great extent.
One very easy indication is where chickens establish feral populations from escaped domestic breeds.
The ideal range seems to be from 20 centigrade to 35 centigrade. Anything below 20 centigrade I think it's safe to assume that the chicken feels cold. This doesn't mean they drop down dead, it just means they are out of ther comfort zone. Many creatures will survive in conditions outside their temperature comfort range provided they have sufficient fuel to generate heat.
A more interesting question is should we try to keep chickens in these out of comfort conditions.

 

[Shadrach]

I spent several years of my young adulthood sailing around the South Pacific and every island had chickens kept as you described, brought there by the Polynesians. They were very much like game fowl, not very large or meaty, but not needing much or any husbandry either. Probably not many predators on those islands (I'm thinking maybe only skuas and frigate birds).

At the other extreme, many years ago in Los Angeles, a big rig carrying a load of chickens (I think they were leghorns - some battery breed), crashed on the 10 Freeway. Many of the chickens escaped and for a couple decades, the famed wild chickens of the Santa Monica Freeway lived and reproduced on the sides of one of the busiest roadways in America, foraging in places as diverse as MacDonalds and high end restaurants, and in the planted areas of parking lots and the freeway verges itself.

My question is that if battery breeds supposedly don't go broody or learn survival skills, how did these chickens keep going? I live here and I saw them with chicks.

You beat me to it.

 

[RoyalChick]

I spent several years of my young adulthood sailing around the South Pacific and every island had chickens kept as you described, brought there by the Polynesians. They were very much like game fowl, not very large or meaty, but not needing much or any husbandry either. Probably not many predators on those islands (I'm thinking maybe only skuas and frigate birds).

At the other extreme, many years ago in Los Angeles, a big rig carrying a load of chickens (I think they were leghorns - some battery breed), crashed on the 10 Freeway. Many of the chickens escaped and for a couple decades, the famed wild chickens of the Santa Monica Freeway lived and reproduced on the sides of one of the busiest roadways in America, foraging in places as diverse as MacDonalds and high end restaurants, and in the planted areas of parking lots and the freeway verges itself.

My question is that if battery breeds supposedly don't go broody or learn survival skills, how did these chickens keep going? I live here and I saw them with chicks.

I am guessing you are referring to these chickens?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holly....1469°N 118.3703,) in Los Angeles, California.

 

[NatJ]

One very easy indication is where chickens establish feral populations from escaped domestic breeds.
The ideal range seems to be from 20 centigrade to 35 centigrade.

I assumed the main issue was food, which is much less available in the winter in cold places.

I've seen several people on this forum report that their chickens find less food while free ranging, and require more purchased food, at temperatures where the people do not notice or mention any behavioral changes in the chickens. Yes, they might be missing behavioral changes-- but they are certainly noticing that the chickens eat more of the food they buy.

 

[RoyalChick]

Some of you may be interested in this article.
Note the use of large scale production by the romans and of incubators by the Egyptians. These are both multiple hundreds of years BC.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-chicken-conquered-the-world-87583657/

 

[Shadrach]

And then there is the modern commerically raised breeds don't go broody.
There is just so much evidence that refutes this myth it's hard to know where to start.
I'll start with Ribh. Ribh has a very diverse group of chickens who have bit by bit decided that conventional wives tales don't apply to them.
How has this happened then. Perhaps Ribh might show us some pictures of the setup she used to have? I thought it was wonderfull. It looked like a jungle. You could tell that the chickens felt comfortable with their environment and also importantly with Ribh.
If Ribh had a rooster she would have chicks popping out from under the flower pots.
I got told when I first started looking after the chickens in Catalonia that they didn't go broody and that was because they were non broody breeds. The French Maransin particular have a reputation for being reluctant to sit and hatch. As soon as all the chickens had decided who and where they wanted to live and better accomodation and food was supplied first the bantams went broody and then the Marans. I didn't take their eggs. Each tribe had a rooster. There was plenty to eat. They built nests all over the place despite the very high predator load in the area. The environment they were living in changed and that was enough to make the difference.

 

[Shadrach]

I assumed the main issue was food, which is much less available in the winter in cold places.

I've seen several people on this forum report that their chickens find less food while free ranging, and require more purchased food, at temperatures where the people do not notice or mention any behavioral changes in the chickens. Yes, they might be missing behavioral changes-- but they are certainly noticing that the chickens eat more of the food they buy.

Well, it takes about an acre of decent forage rich land to fully support a pair of jungle fowl. I think one would need to know a bit more about what they mean by free ranging and what the ground they free range on was like.
I often read people writing about free ranging as letting their chickens out for an hour in their back yards.
I would expect that some people report an increase in feed consumption in the winter because as you mention forage becomes harder to find. To read that their chickens eat more commercial feed when they free range than they do when confined is surprising to say the least.