Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[ManueB]

Don't let him try to make the "ducks" swim!!

The witch test applied to ducks, if you drown you're not a witch / duck but you're dead, if you survive you're a witch / duck and you get burned

Spiders and the bloody mites both have 8 legs. That explains it.
And I do understand you have difficulties .



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My chickies were trespassing today. Went for a streetwalk and after that to the neighbour’s strawberry garden.
These know are my own (behind a rabbit fence to prevent the robbers to steal them. )
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You mean you trained your chickens to go steal the neighbors strawberries so they will leave your own alone ?

This little guy tried to crow for the first time yesterday. Sky and Mr. Bumble's son.

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He is beautiful but I wouldn't mess with him, he looks fierce !

 

[ManueB]

the picture is of my lost Venka, a Swedish Flower; she was my prettiest hen. The Penedesencas I've got are partridge plumage - also very nice, but that snow leopard colouring was something else. I miss her dearly. I do hope some of her eggs hatch. One of last week's hatch was hers, the brown chick, but I suspect it's a boy.

So she definitely did not come back. I'm sorry, she certainly had a good chicken life and enjoyed her freedom. It would be nice indeed to have some of her egg hatch.
I think it was you that mentioned swedish flower hens don't have a standard so they can be several different colours. I'm curious to know, how is the breed defined then ?

 

[ManueB]

Congrats on a featured article, Shad!

I sure wish my chickens hadn't read your article.
Théo used to escort the hens to lay without them asking but since a few days he stopped and each morning all the layers are screaming for help to secure the nests.
I don't know if it's due to the chick's hatch, or to them spending too much time on BYC.

Wet and miserable this evening. Some came out for an hour or so, some came out and thought better of it when the drizzle turned to rain.
Coop progress zero. Veg plot too wet to do much with. Trouser bottoms soaked.
My friend came down to the allotments though and very knidly brought a bag of layers pellets with him. I stood out in the wet chatting to him while the chickens glared balefully at the low grey clouds and shook the worst of the wet off their feathers.
Matilda didn't mess about, ate and went straight into the new coop followed by two or three others. She seems to have decided that the new coop is her space.
Henry treid to mate with one of the particualry wet Ex Battery hens, slid off and dumped his arse in the mud. The band aid on my cut finger got assaulted by a couple of hens during feeding. I dread to think what they think it is wrapped around my finger but whatever they thought they seemed determined to kill it.
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I wish I could give you some sun and borrow some of that rain.
Mine also go for band aids and I have a serial Kleenex killer too. I really have to pay attention to keeping my pockets zipped because once she actually gobbled one before I had the time to pull it away from her beak.
I wonder if it's not a good thing from the chickens pov that the building takes time because they will be really used to the coop when it's ready for them to roost in it.

 

[ManueB]

I am fascinated by the human mind. So flexible in some people and so rigid in others.

I can understand that rational thought facing some of today's realities is so incredibly difficult and complex that one would find it simpler to delude oneself in taking a chicken for a duck.

I became deficient from too much time indoors and even had to supplement a few years back, but bringing hens into the backyard fixed it for me and a test from a couple of weeks ago showed no deficit.

My doctor actually thought it wasn't a concern and that the required numbers had been set a bit high. She asked me to supplement only because the level of hemoglobin was also too low, I didn't because I'm not serious about those things. Hope I don't regret it like @Sally PB .

Tax for turning again the thread away from chickens into a supplement commercial. Caramel is not getting over the broken egg inside her.

 

[Perris]

So she definitely did not come back. I'm sorry, she certainly had a good chicken life and enjoyed her freedom. It would be nice indeed to have some of her egg hatch.
I think it was you that mentioned swedish flower hens don't have a standard so they can be several different colours. I'm curious to know, how is the breed defined then ?

No she didn't come back, sadly but yes, she did have a good life, for 5 years, which is longer than a lot of chickens get.

You remember aright regarding SFH absence of standard, so it's a very good question. In Sweden those trying to preserve it take a very strict line about pedigree from one of the 3 villages where it survived, but elsewhere it's a free for all. The spots are a defining feature for me, because we've had a few mixed progeny, and none of them have had good spotting (the white spots are the 'flowers'), while the two pure progeny did. See Llyn for example https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...hickens-thread.1502267/page-355#post-25441147 who is SFH x silver duckwing Welsumer (which is a sex-linked cross in those we've hatched to date btw; mum's silver goes to the boys, dad's gold (red) goes to the girls).

 

[Perris]

Caramel is not getting over the broken egg inside her.

for her recovery.

 

[BDutch]

You mean you trained your chickens to go steal the neighbors strawberries so they will leave your own alone ?

Yesterday evening they had their verdict for trespassing and stealing fruit..
Today they stay in prison (until this evening when the guards can watch where they are, from minute to minute.

The right angle:

What do you think? Chickens or ducks?

 

[RoyalChick]

A Vitamin D manufacturing facility.
It is only operating at part capacity as some of the workers needed to have breakfast before settling down to work.

 

[Perris]

the little fuzz balls here are doing dustbathing 101 with mum...it's too cute

 

[Shadrach]

I had to look them up too, RC ~ & they are seriously gorgeous chickens that are not available here. Probably a good thing or I would be adding some to my circus.

I used to see them on the farms on the way to a wildlife park further up the coast in Catalonia. Almost always black.