Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[ManueB]

I didn't collect the eggs daily and when I did collect some I didn't take them all.
In part it's from believing in don't take what you can, only what you need and then the difficulty of finding all the nest sites.

Ok, I can see that could also happen when you have more chicken and more than one coop. Or if you have multiple nest locations outside the coop and you let hens sleep outside.

I did. It's not for publishing on BYC though.
@BY Bob and others very kindly made me a PDF of the Tribes from a particular point in time and maybe he can link you to it.

That's was kind of him indeed! I will ask him but I'm just being curious ( nosy?). I think my hens are rubbing off on me.

How are you handling chicken withdrawal for almost a week ? I hope you haven't started crowing on your balcony .

 

[ManueB]

The babies in the small coop.
View attachment 3090089

View attachment 3090090

That's pretty cute tax. Is that Skeksis junior scratching his back on the second photo ? How is he doing?

 

[no fly zone]

That's pretty cute tax. Is that Skeksis junior scratching his back on the second photo ? How is he doing?

Doing well so far at the two week mark.

 

[Shadrach]

Ok, I can see that could also happen when you have more chicken and more than one coop. Or if you have multiple nest locations outside the coop and you let hens sleep outside.

That's was kind of him indeed! I will ask him but I'm just being curious ( nosy?). I think my hens are rubbing off on me.

You've missed the most important bit. It's wasn't the difficulty of finding the eggs. It's more the beliefe that one shouldn't take what one can, only what one needs. I know, it's problematical view for many humans.
It was a discussion I had with the rest of the household on a number of occasions. It went something like this.
Mrs/Mr X. "I've taken the eggs out of coop two."
Me. "Why."
Always seems to stop them in their tracks for a moment does that reply.
A second or two later.
Mrs/Mr X. "I'm making a such and such."
Me. "How many eggs do you need for that?"
Mrs/Mr X. Four.
Me. "You've got nine eggs there."
Silence.
It seems somepeople just can't help it. They see things and they just take what they see with no real idea of what they are going to do with what they take.

This is fairly concerning in itself but when one considers that I have tried over and over to explain that if they take all the eggs the hen goes and lays in another location more often than not in a free range setting. I have to find that location.
Next in the case of the chickens in Catalonia they are stealing the potential offspring of the mating pair. I've even had the discussion "why does that rooster attack me when I try to take the eggs."

Despite my best attempts at explaing that chicken die and to replace them one needs fertile eggs and I'm the person responsible for making sure there are new hatchings each year to replace those that die and some forthought and planning, not to mention some understanding of the chicken itself is necessary to successfully acomplish this, the message didn't get through.




Ah, you're confusing me with all those people who seem to think they can be chicken momas. Nope, I don't do crowing. For a start I have vocal chords and roosters have voice boxes so it would be a bit like trying to make a trumpet sound like a trombone. The other difficulty is I don't have a balcony. However if you want to pop over a build me a balcony I'm prepared to have a go in spite of the odds.

How are you handling chicken withdrawal for almost a week ?

It's been rather pleasant apart from the illness. I haven't had to deal with C's arrogance and lack of self esteem if that's what it is. My evenings are free. While not well I'm not contagious so I've got to see some family.
I beleive the chickens are getting fed and have got out at least a couple of times while I've been sick and I have the coop project to look foreward to when I'm fit enough.

 

[ManueB]

Thank you, that was a very enlightening explanation. I'm quite ashamed to say that indeed I never thought of it this way.
I think a lot of us that got chicken recently had hens only, so it doesn't seem as obvious. When I got mine I was ignorant to the point I didn't even find out for quite a while how chicks were made and what it meant for a hen to brood. And even when I learnt about it and now that I have a rooster, I didn't follow the line of reasoning that taking away the eggs mean taking away potential children and destroying the chance of survival for the tribe.

I wish I had understood this before because even though my six ex-batts when we had no rooster were very far from the natural behaviour of the tribes in Catalonia, when they were younger they did show some of those instincts to protect their eggs and we stopped them because it wasn't convenient and we didn't know better.

That said I do have a practical question : what happens to the eggs that you leave, and that no one broods on? Do you collect them after a while or do you leave them untouched ? I'm sure you've said it before but do you leave any eggs in the allotments where the situation is quite different ?

I will definitely change the way I collect the eggs from now on. Although my flock does not free range I believe they have a big enough natural zone to build back some of their instinctive behaviour.

It's more the beliefe that one shouldn't take what one can, only what one needs. I know, it's problematical view for many humans.

We eat all the eggs we take or feed them back to the hens. Do we "need" them ? Certainly not as we used to eat way less when we were buying them.

If you allow a disgression, this reminds me of what happens with the honey we take from the bees. I love honey and when I was buying it I would eat more than a lot. However now we have the hives we saw how angry it makes the bees when we take it from them and that if we take too much, or at the wrong time, it endangers the hives survival. We learned the lesson the hard way (harder for the hives that is) so now we take less and I eat other things for breakfast. I wouldn't say my partner and I are greedy people, we have very basic needs compared to many, but we still need to be reminded of that lesson again and again.

I'm sorry you have no balcony and no voice box, but maybe it is best for your neighbors, and glad you're taking this on the good side. Hopefully this will make C. see that your presence make things easier for them and king Henri will have kept good order among the people.

 

[Perris]

I think I am at a kind of half way house on this. Every nest box has at least 1 fake egg in it, and obviously I always leave them. I am also quite circumspect/furtive about taking the eggs, doing it when the chickens are not around, or hiding what's in my hand. Those currently laying away are better at math or have rumbled me, evidently, and I have yet to find the white layers' secret nest - but at least no-one's gone broody on it

I take all the eggs they lay most of the year, and sell most of them to cover the cost of keeping the flock, but I also let up to 3 hens raise a brood every year; the first one on bought in hatching eggs to increase the genetic diversity and ensure new blood in the flock, the second on eggs by the most robust/reliable/likable hens in the flock, and the third, if it happens, is a bit haphazard depending on what happened earlier in the season and who's gone broody that time. This system works for me and I think the hens and roos like it. I'm sure that Chirk thinks the Penedesenca boys are his, and quite a few of the others are actually his.

 

[BDutch]

…

… That said I do have a practical question : what happens to the eggs that you leave, and that no one broods on? Do you collect them after a while or do you leave them untouched ? I'm sure you've said it before but do you leave any eggs in the allotments where the situation is quite different ? …

If you leave eggs for several weeks/months in the nest they can rot.
Only if you have a broody, a rooster and you want chicks its wise to leave many eggs in the nest for days imo.

If there is no hen sitting on the eggs, you can mark the ones you leave behind and collect them a week or so later. As long as the eggs are still good (to eat). How long it’s safe to leave them in the nest depends on the temperature.

Normally I have two fake eggs that I leave in the nestboxes. I take away all fresh eggs to eat them. With only 6 bantams (3 oldies) the supply of eggs is just right for us ( my love and myself).

If I leave more eggs in the nestbox I have a broody within a week. Which is very inconvenient because I don’t have a rooster and I don’t want more chicks now.
My flock of 6 has enough space if I need to keep them locked in the coop/run because of the HPAI. Adding chicks without free ranging for the old flock would make it crampy.

 

[Perris]

By way of unpaid tax, and to illustrate the point about Chirk and the Penny boys, this was Chirk and Pip chillin' together yesterday

 

[Perris]

May the 4th be with you all today

 

[Shadrach]

That said I do have a practical question : what happens to the eggs that you leave, and that no one broods on? Do you collect them after a while or do you leave them untouched ? I'm sure you've said it before but do you leave any eggs in the allotments where the situation is quite different ?

Someone always ended up sitting on them if the eggs were laid in one of the coops, or my house.
Predators often ate the eggs in the outside nest.
Some eggs got broken at the nest site in which case all the eggs got removed and either fed back to the chickens or left for scavengers further up the mountain.
In the event the eggs got sat on what I did depended on who sat, when and where. I had a system by which I hoped I allowed the chickens to carry out as near to their natural behaviour as practicable and reduce the number of eggs they laid each year. Some eggs I ate, others got eaten by the other people at the place. Some didn't get found.
I tried to let every hen that wanted to sit and hatch do it at least once in their lifetime. It was the fairest compromise I could manage. Out of the chicks that hatched less than 50% survived to adulthood.
My primary interest in chickens was, and still is, to study their behaviour. I am particularly interested in how the keeping circumstances influences their behaviour and if certain controls are removed how long it takes (generations) for the chicken to revert to behaviour more similar to their ancestors.

The allotment chickens are a rather different matter. They provide me with a more rewarding friendship than I would find with most of my own species and give me the opportunity to study in a limited fashion the differences in behaviour of confined chickens living in the keeping model that most here on BYC have compared to what I have learnt from chickens elswhere.
All the eggs at the allotment get taken on a near to daily basis. The keeping circumstances are not suitable for the rearing of chicks.