Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Ribh]

During the best forage seasons the chickens in Catalonia ate a very small amount of commercial feed. I used to get the piss taken at the chicken club for feeding them any commercial feed at all.

My feed bill went down over summer. The girls were happy to forage with just a bit of a top up on commercial feed but nearly everybody is moulting just now & I am down to just 2 layers [Olivia & Portia], & they are asking for more of the commercial feed. I put 2 trays down this morning & they cleaned every last scrap up & were @ the door asking for dinner this afternoon. The cats are on a special diet so get fish in springwater & I put the cans out for the girls to clean up each afternoon. No~one gets a lot but everyone gets a sniff. All the frizzles are keen to get the fishy stuff but given their feathering that is hardly surprising. This is the 1st time I can remember everybody wanting more commercial feed instead of foraging more while they moult.

 

[Perris]

I know you make your own feed so I was going to ask you what you did.

As you know but maybe others reading this do not, my birds do not depend entirely on me for food as they free range dawn to dusk and I have good forage (that doesn't just happen; I encourage it with piles of rotting wood of many sizes and species scattered around, and letting 'weeds' grow in more places than many people feel comfortable with, including things that are toxic to chickens) so what I actually offer them is less important than it would be if they were confined and depended on me for all their nutrition. They spend all day rummaging around and I'm sure I know only a fraction of what they find and eat while they are at it. Among the plants I only notice when something I really like is heavily browsed, but very few are eaten to destruction. Grass is 11-28% protein. I know their diet includes things a lot of people would rather not know about, like amphibians, fallen fledglings, dog poo etc. I have no idea of the nutritional profile of those foods, but expect they have some useful even essential substances, and I trust the chickens to know what is and is not good for them to eat. They don't eat the foxgloves or hemlock, or a lot of other things growing in the garden and beyond.

I use a sack of mixed grain (traditionally labeled 'mixed corn', but is 80% wheat, 20% cracked maize, and a splash of veg oil) as the base. For one feed's worth I add (by eye) about 5% whole oats, 10% dried green peas, and 5% whole sunflower seed; all dumped into a mason jar and covered with water and a dollop of natural yogurt, given a good stir and left to ferment in a warm place for 24+hrs. Bubbles rising tell me when it's fermenting, but I give it and they eat it in any stage of development, and I use developed liquor as the base for the next batch. Excess over-gelatinous liquor (starch drawn out of the stuff fermenting) is dumped to make a more dilute starting brew. Some of the flock don't like or eat the peas, other do. Peas + grain make a complete protein like animal and dairy proteins. I sprinkle a handful of live mealworms (source of essential lysine and methionine, plus the other amino acids) on this when I serve it. They eat more of this in winter and less in summer (very little now while the forage is booming).

Irregularly I add:

• a tin of sardines (in brine to boost calcium, in oil to boost fats; either for boost of all amino acids),
• wheatbran wetted with a little milk for 4+ hours (good source of potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, iron, zinc, manganese and a lot of vitamins esp niacin; soaking with milk reduces the antinutritional factors of dry bran, and I have wheatbran on hand for the mealworm farm)
• plain natural yogurt (calcium boost)
• banana (potassium and B6 boost)
• cod liver oil (vit A and vit D boost)
• evening primrose oil (linoleic acid boost if egg size decreasing across the board)

Assuming you even wanted to try this, it's not obvious to me that any of this is feasible at the allotments.

 

[Shadrach]

I tend to see things very similarly and think of Théo as an awkward 14 years old boy! I know that's anthropomorphic but sometimes he has such expressions, I can see him wondering "should I jump on this hen, or would tidbitting be a better tactic" ?
He actually changed his roosting place to be closer to the ex-batts, but not on their ladder . And he protects brooding Chipie when the other hens approach her nest. And he's beginning to make an impression on Nougat, the hen that most detested him from the start, by giving her over and over worms.
Most of you are so used to this rooster thing but it's very new to me and I could watch him for hours.
You were probably more patient with Stilton than I am. I have to remind me to not intervene everytime he hurts a hen because it's just the normal way things go. I hope in time he settles down a bit, when he does not have to prove himself all the time. And i'm not sure either how he sees me, but I'm pretty sure he sees my partner as a bigger rooster.

The majority of the roosters I've known settle down given time; usually 18 months or more. Having senior roosters and hens to observe often helps.
This is in part what makes so many of the aggressive rooster posts so sad. Much like teenage humans, they need some slack cut while they try to make sense of the world.
I would bet a good portion of my annual pension that in most cases where a cockerel gets killed for their behaviour, given some time and a better understanding of the nature of chickens in general, these "trouble makers" would settle down to be responsible and well behaved roosters.

Btw, there is nothing wrong with anthropomorphism. The reasons anthropomorphism became something to be discouraged had little to do with it's accuracy or worth. It became something to be discouraged primarily due to religious convictions that we, humans, are somehow different from the other species on the planet. It's interesting to note that comparisons between the other non human species is not frowned upon.
One needs to bear in mind, when and by whome the bulk of scientific studies were undertaken that have underpinned such science since.

 

[NatJ]

We give the hens some of the corn we grow, it's not the same as the one we grow for us, I'm not sure if it's called corn in English. I'm thinking of growing wheat, but the main problem is the milling. The corn we grind with a manual coffee grinder, it works for little quantity but it takes a lot of time.
View attachment 3112888

Yes, we call that "corn" too.
With all the different colors, people sometimes call it "indian corn" or "ornamental corn" or when it is all one color they may call it blue corn or red corn or whatever.

Is there a reason you need to grind the grains at all? Chickens usually do fine with whole grains, as long as they have enough grit in their gizzards to grind it up. Those gizzards are their own personal mills

 

[NatJ]

Btw, there is nothing wrong with anthropomorphism. The reasons anthropomorphism became something to be discouraged had little to do with it's accuracy or worth. It became something to be discouraged primarily due to religious convictions that we, humans, are somehow different from the other species on the planet. It's interesting to note that comparisons between the other non human species is not frowned upon.
One needs to bear in mind, when and by whome the bulk of scientific studies were undertaken that have underpinned such science since.

Sometimes there are problems with anthropomorphism. It depends on how it is being used.

I have seen people on here with questions, worried about how their chicken "feels" about something, and missing an obvious, physical, chicken-appropriate explanation (that solved the problem.) Sorry, I can't think of any specific ones right now.

 

[BDutch]

I am also interested to hear how you work this out. I'm not happy with the commercial feed we are getting. We tried conventional instead of organics because they changed the composition of what we were using. The conventional feed my partner bought is basically just corn and soy in different forms, half the soy is GMO, which in France means it comes from Brazil, so basically everything I'm trying to avoid.

We give the hens some of the corn we grow, it's not the same as the one we grow for us, I'm not sure if it's called corn in English. I'm thinking of growing wheat, but the main problem is the milling. The corn we grind with a manual coffee grinder, it works for little quantity but it takes a lot of time.
View attachment 3112888

Because of the used poisons and devastation of the rainforest in Brazil, I hate the GMO soy and corn in the commercial feed too. So I feed my chickens organic.

The organic layer feed and scratch they eat now is a commercial feed for laying hybrids too (for the organic egg industry).

The organic chicken feed from, a shop for pets/hobby animal keepers, is more expensive and has almost the same amount of calcium. 3,5 vs 4 mg /100 g.

 

[Shadrach]

Sometimes there are problems with antropomorphism. It depends on how it is being used.

I have seen people on here with questions, worried about how their chicken "feels" about something, and missing an obvious, physical, chicken-appropriate explanation (that solved the problem.) Sorry, I can't think of any specific ones right now.

True, there are problems with it. But, there are problems with all interspecies comparisons.
Someone said, or wrote, something like "without our possessions we are indistiguishable from any other species."
It is a very broad brush saying and I can't find a direct quote but there is some merit in the saying.
My view is that we are likely to make more progress in understanding other species and maybe our own by looking at the similarities rather than the differences.

 

[NatJ]

My view is that we are likely to make more progress in understanding other species and maybe our own by looking at the similarities rather than the differences.

On the whole, I agree.

I just notice the problems when people try to see animals as being just like people, while entirely missing the differences.

It's obviously one of those cases where some balance is needed-- there are both similarities and differences, and missing either one can cause problems.

 

[Shadrach]

On the whole, I agree.

I just notice the problems when people try to see animals as being just like people, while entirely missing the differences.

It's obviously one of those cases where some balance is needed-- there are both similarities and differences, and missing either one can cause problems.

I think some of the type of posts you may have in mind can be understood by knowing the age and background of the OP.
I've been caught out a few times. It's not until further in the thread one works out that the OP is somewhere between ten and fourteen years old.
While youth has many attributes, balance and wisdom are often not amoung them.

 

[ManueB]

I just notice the problems when people try to see animals as being just like people, while entirely missing the differences.

I also think antropormophism without experience and knowledge can lead to denying difference. I'm not 14, but I only have 28 months experience keeping chickens and I could easily fall into that trap because i find their behaviour are actually very similar to that of humans in many ways, much more than cats, or sheeps or horses for example. And from a theoretical point of view I believe it could also lead if taken to it's extreme to a denial of any alterity other than human.