Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[LaFemmeKatia]

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.

This is my philosophy as well. While I get that my domesticated chickens have been “robbed” of their natural wild life, I also think that they only even exist at all because of farming and breeding, and I love my little tribe for what and who they are. I try to provide them with an environment in which they can enjoy their lives. They run and play and forage all day. They live for feeding time and treat time.
It’s not a jungle fowl life, but it’s their life.

 

[Marie2020]

I'm concerned flexi is laying on egg almost every day. She seems a little broody to

 

[LaFemmeKatia]

Michelle, Shad is an idealist. [no offense, Shad ] The bottom line is chickens have been domesticated ~ for better or worse. The question is, to my mind, more where do we go from here? I have a number of hens who didn't get the memo about being wild & feral . They squat for me, roost on me, groom me, follow me round like dogs ~ & I think that is ok. The relationship between human & animal can be a wonderful thing. No, it's not natural in its purest sense but it is natural when there is a co-dependent relationship & mutual trust. I think you have a wonderful relationship with your birds. I imagine, like me, with greater knowledge you are relooking @ how your tribe evolves & the breeds you keep.

I am with you. And yet I do appreciate Shad in his quest to learn the true soul of The Chicken.

 

[Marie2020]

Commercial enterprises that run high production breeds like ISAs only keep them for 18 months~ 2 years before culling them. This is when *rescue* groups move in. So technically not battery hens but not likey to be kept past their use by date either.

As she said.

Plus they would be killed for pet food if no one rescued them. Can you imagine how wrong that is, they've locked in tiny cages, just for their eggs then killed.

 

[LaFemmeKatia]

I was really ignorant about chickens when we got our only lot of rescues. I was horrified @ the condition they arrived in & they barely made it another 12 months. I wish high production breeds were banned but that is unlikely to happen. If people understood more about the natural cycles I think they would be less fraught about how many eggs they were getting. I have 18 hens @ present. 5 are broody , Sif & Soda are not laying & Beatha is erratic. She hasn't laid @ all this week but I still had 4 1/2 dozen eggs to give away. And of my 10 layers no~one lays every single day. Next door has 2 bantams. The only time their girls haven't provided enough eggs for their family of 4 is when one of their bantams went broody. Bantams are decent little layers though their eggs are smaller & they don't lay as often as the high production breeds & therein lies 1/2 the problem. People want big eggs & lots of them. I actually like the smaller eggs. They are nearly all yolk. However I don't want what happened to standard hens to happen to the bantams.

Production breeds will always be kept as long as people eat eggs. In almost every grocery cart in every line is at least a dozen eggs.
I am really pleased with myself, lol, because I have not bought an egg in a year and a half. I am spoiled now.
Some of my girls are “production hens” breed-wise, because I had little knowledge when I started. Regardless of how long they live, I treat them like the queens they are while they are here.
We all live for as long as we do, so for me, it’s about quality of life.

 

[Marie2020]

Production breeds will always be kept as long as people eat eggs. In almost every grocery cart in every line is at least a dozen eggs.
I am really pleased with myself, lol, because I have not bought an egg in a year and a half. I am spoiled now.
Some of my girls are “production hens” breed-wise, because I had little knowledge when I started. Regardless of how long they live, I treat them like the queens they are while they are here.
We all live for as long as we do, so for me, it’s about quality of life.

I've been lucky, I found free range eggs about a year before I got my girls.

 

[Iluveggers]

The honest truth is I need more chickens.

Ahh….don’t we all…


DH said 4 for the yard, I convinced him 5 would be much safer in case anything happened to one of them. It is all I can do not to get the backyard max of 6 here.

 

[LaFemmeKatia]

I must have missed the era when Idealism became pursuit of fools and dreamers.

I guess we've all got to stick with the program these days, unquestioning and trotting out the usual dogma about the real world and practicalities.

Domesticated; now there's an interesting word.

"adapted over time (as by selective breeding) from a wild or natural state to life in close association with and to the benefit of humans"

I can't see anything in this definition that demands that the process of domestication necessitates the reduction of a creatures life span by one third or more, or any of the other atrocities inflicted on the chicken.

Domestication does not necessarily need to be an abusive process.

I read the satement that chickens have been domesticated a lot. I read that domestication has changed the chicken so fundamentaly that all those things that were relevant to the chickens ancestors are no longer applicable to the domesticated chicken.

The problem is that isn't what the science has found. It's a perception based on ignorance and even worse a perception based on some value judgement that has absolutely no bearing on reality.

Of course, those who can't be bothered to read the growing number of studies (some of which I've provided in this thread) and prefer to stick to their subjective view of the chicken because it helps them to feel comfortable about the abuses they've inflicted on the chicken are never going to change their view, or their behaviour.

Education, it seems is yet another "thing" that has fallen into disregard along with idealism.

Quite early on in this thread I deliberately told a bit of the story of Mr Young, my Uncle’s farm manager who viewed the hens kept in the batteries as a creature less than a chicken. I did this in part because it was only a matter of time before the term domesticated came under discussion and this too has become a term used to describe a creature as something less than a chicken.

We now have a range of chickens with differing attributes it seems.

There is the jungle fowl and according to some, many of the “natural” behaviours of the jungle fowl have been bred out of the domesticated chicken.

There are what are best described as semi feral populations and even with these some people will say some of the natural behaviours have been bred out of these too.

Then we have the typical back yard chicken who also have apparently lost many of their “natural” behaviour drives.

Lastly we have the battery hen and she is hardly a chicken at all in the view of some people.

The things is, the science tells a rather different story. It seems from the various studies that while there have been some physiological changes such as the enlarging of some areas in the brain and changes in weight and size, essentially with regard to their behaviour the chicken in the battery cage is much the same as the jungle fowl.

Read the studies. Rather than pick out the few examples of the relatively minor changes consider all those behaviours that haven’t changed at all.

So, if I now write we are keeping jungle fowl in cages and unnatural groups which cause stress and disease and long term health damage to the species, does that help put my idealism in a better perspective?

I look at it this way, any creature that has been domesticated, has essentially been tamed.
Battery hens have been enslaved. They are still a chicken.
Ever read those stories of children raised in a closet? They are twisted and will never be “right”, but it is still best to release them from the closet and attempt to care for them properly.

 

[LaFemmeKatia]

I look at it this way, any creature that has been domesticated, has essentially been tamed.
Battery hens have been enslaved. They are still a chicken.
Ever read those stories of children raised in a closet? They are twisted and will never be “right”, but it is still best to release them from the closet and attempt to care for them properly.

I am sure I owe some tax by now:

 

[Iluveggers]

I look at it this way, any creature that has been domesticated, has essentially been tamed.
Battery hens have been enslaved. They are still a chicken.
Ever read those stories of children raised in a closet? They are twisted and will never be “right”, but it is still best to release them from the closet and attempt to care for them properly.

I agree. Plus, those of us who keep chickens, even if they are not free-range 24/7, let them explore, be outside, and (most of us) let them live out their lives. My family farm has the girls in a large moveable run where they get to go outside all day in the dirt and forage for bugs and weeds. The hawk threat is too high. Although not completely “free”, they have a great life and are well taken care of. We do not put a light in the coop in the winter so sales will go down until spring next year, but we are ok with that. Plus, every customer who buys our eggs is NOT buying the eggs produced by a factory hen, which I think is the most important thing of all.

My aunt is fixing up part of the barn, which will become the “retirement building”. When our hens slow down to less than 1 egg a week, they will be moved there to live out their lives until they pass. Working on fencing in a large portion of the back. With over 100 acres we have options! This is great for me too so when my backyard flock is done, I can move a couple of them there and add a couple new layers. With a max of 6 this is a wonderful benefit most backyard keepers don’t have. She said she does not want to kill any of our chickens. We did have 3 ISAs and 2 Production Reds in our first order, but we decided on no production breeds anymore.