Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning one and all!

The temperature is 67 and sunny.

Have a great day!

 

[no fly zone]

Henry is quite a majestic rooster.

Here is a better pic of Rick. I am no expert on breeding/show standards or whatnot, but in my opinion he was a great looking bird, and I loved him. His death was a costly learning experience, but may have inadvertently saved the rest of the flock in the process.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Henry is quite a majestic rooster.

Here is a better pic of Rick. I am no expert on breeding/show standards or whatnot, but in my opinion he was a great looking bird, and I loved him. His death was a costly learning experience, but may have inadvertently saved the rest of the flock in the process.

View attachment 2954553

Oh he is stunning.

 

[Iluveggers]

Amazing color contrast. He looks regal!

 

[Shadrach]

It's lovely to see them out and about.

 

[JacinLarkwell]

Heres some tax. Everyone was feeling great today and beat me outside

 

[Shadrach]

Shad, I’ve done a lot of reflecting today. I had a full day with the Birds. Like, a full 9 1/2 hours. I agree with you that the species of the chicken has been really screwed up. However, I really do love my birds the way they are. I love that they cuddle with me and talk to me and squat for me. I know, I know. That is so far from what they would do in a natural setting. But I do love them so much, and they actually love me back. I know you’re probably rolling your eyes, and that my chickens are the perfect example of the destroyed species. But I just love them.

That being said, I will continue to nurture their natural instincts. I know mine don’t have the natural instincts that others do, since they were raised in captivity by a human. The only three that were raised by a chicken were still hatchery stock, and have been my least healthy birds. And I no longer want to contribute to an industry that exploits them. I’m not sure what to do about keeping chickens moving forward, but I think they’re magical.

I'm not rolling my eyes. However, I think they do have those natural instincts, just like I'm seeing the Ex Battery hens slowly develope. It's having the opportunity to practice and develope them and pass them on to the next generation that is important to me.
Even the science studies support the idea that chickens are still chickens and what prevents them from behaving as their ancestors do/did is not that they've lost the ability; it's that they're institutionalised for want of a better expression.
Give them the oportunity and they will relearn. Yes many will die in the process.
Lots died in the tribes as they gradually learn't how to cope with the environment. While we didn't have bobcats etc we had foxes, weasels, dogs, Martens, Mink and the hardest predator to prevent, the Goshawk. 90% of the deaths and injuries were due to the Goshawk.
You've been reading my posts for a long time now and looking at the pictures of the tribes and reading their stories as they learnt to adapt; did they look like contented healthy happy chickens to you?
Every couple of months one would get killed but the tribe and the genes survived. The next generation replaced the one before and life went on.
This is what I'm forever trying to get over to people here on BYC. Yes they die. Yes it's heartbreaking. But if you give them the right environment and support, they learn, and reproduce and the losses become less and most of all, they get to make their own choices, just like we do and many other species as well.

 

[micstrachan]

I'm not rolling my eyes. However, I think they do have those natural instincts, just like I'm seeing the Ex Battery hens slowly develope. It's having the opportunity to practice and develope them and pass them on to the next generation that is important to me.
Even the science studies support the idea that chickens are still chickens and waht prevents them from behaving as their ancestors do/did is not that they've lost the ability; it's that they've institutionalised for want of a better expression.
Give them the oportunity and they will relearn. Yes many will die in the process.
Lots died in the tribes as they gradually learn't how to cope with the environment. While we didn't have bobcats etc we had foxes, weasels, dogs, Martens, Mink and the hardest predator to prevent, the Goshawk. 90% of the deaths and injuries were due to the Goshawk.
You've been reading my posts for a long time now and looking at the pictures of the tribes and reading their stories as they learnt to adapt; did they look like contented healthy happy chickens to you?
Every couple of months one would get killed but the tribe and the genes survived. The next generation replaced the one before and life went on.
This is what I'm forever trying to get over to people here on BYC. Yes they die. Yes it's heartbreaking. But if you give them the right environment and support they learn and reproduce and the losses become less and most of all they get to make their own choices, just like we do and many other species as well.

Yes, they did. Thank you for the reminder.

 

[Shadrach]

I have to admit I am still very ambivalent about the whole idea of these ‘rescues’.
I also don’t understand (at least in Europe) why there are still ex-bats to rescue because I thought battery farming was banned. I know what replaced them is still not great for the chickens but I am still confused.

Battery farming has not been banned. There have been some changes to the keeping conditions. Cages have been banned in theory.
However, the batteries still kill laying hens at around 72 weeks and these are the hens that get rescued.

 

[Shadrach]

That is an important distinction to me.
If 'rescue' is a retirement home where some individual chickens are well cared for and live out their chicken-ey days in happiness, then I am all in favor of it for those lucky few hens.
But there is no chance that can happen at the scale of a large scale industry and there is a risk that you take already exhausted individual chickens, and instead of allowing them a hopefully speedy death (a whole other subjuct there) they get exposed to poor conditions under the care of a well-meaning but inexperienced amateur.
My own mindset (which will likely be disapproved of and wouldn't work for everyone anyway) is to support local farms where husbandry practices are such that the animals have a decent life.

This is slowly happening in the UK.
There is a major problem though.
The major difference now between high production breeds and other breeds is not so much how many eggs she can lay, it's how quickly she can lay them. It's the speed if you will of the hens laying that burns her out, not the number of eggs in total. The battery rescues are described by the industry as spent hens. Some will still lay for perhaps another year. Say a battery hen lays 300 eggs a year in her first two years and then maybe a further 150 until she dies. That's a total of 750 eggs. Another hen may only lay 100 eggs a year and live until she is say nine years old. She lives longer because the demands she makes on her reproductive system are spread over time. If she lays 100 eggs a year for seven of those years plus a few as she declines, she still lays as many eggs as the battery hen.
In Catalonia they will tell you a particular breed only has so many eggs in her. There is some physiological evidence for this to do with how a hens reproductive system works.
100 eggs a year is still three times the number of eggs a jungle fowl hen will lay.