Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Are the geese beginning to win you over Shad?

No.

 

[Shadrach]

I've been thinking more about this, and would appreciate your reflections on it too:

Paprika was raised by Maria, my 5 yr old head hen (aka bossy boots), who (as we also discussed recently) stayed with this clutch for almost 4 months, so taught them an awful lot, relatively speaking. So although Paprika had herself only just turned 1 when her clutch hatched, she is relatively very well educated in the arts of foraging and survival (plus her only-1-generation-distant genuine Spanish Penedesenca genes). She can do nothing about her relatively low status in the hierarchy, or the neighbour's cats (who apparently predated the whole of a wild pheasant's clutch that appeared in their garden), but I think she's got nature and nurture on her side. Of course time will tell, but with your long-attentive hen, did you see any benefits of it? I guess I'm grasping at the idea that a good education may compensate for a lack of years and experience, in chickens as well as people...?

There are very few hard and fast rules when it comes to keeping chickens is my belief.
What most of us get left with is options from which we have to make a choice.
Hopefully there is some evidence and/or rational reasoning as to why one choice may be better than another.
In the above case, I've had all sorts of ages of hens sit and hatch. Often for example it's the hens in their second year who seem keenest to sit and hatch.
Sometimes there are only junior hens in years in the group.

I did see benefits with having senior hens sit and hatch once I had been told this was the better option by people who had a great deal of experience in chicken keeping, but, it's a better option if possible; not a fixed rule.

1) Senior hens are senior for a reason, or many reasons, one of which is they've managed to survive to get to be senior.
2) old isn't necessarily senior, although it often seems to work out this way. But, it does show the genes are capable of getting to be old. This is a problem that will become very obvious to people in the USA primarily who bought hatchery chicks. Statistics and logistics mean the gene pool is small, especially with the so called heritage breeds.
3) When Fat Bird for example tells the tribe this is the way it is, most listen. This works from where to go for best cover, who can be trusted amoung the other creatures and how to get from A to B with maximum safety. There is no way younger hens know this instinctively. It has to be learnt. Better to learn from another chicken than by experience because experience can be very very costly when it goes wrong.
4)The younger hens are more productive in general and if eggs are important to you then it is better to have hens long past their laying peak non productive while they sit and hatch.
5) Senior hens get less rooster problems in general and of course, they get the pick of the roosters over junior hens. It's all very well having some just not pullet going "Oh he's just gorgeous" when what's required is attentiveness and reliability.
6)If and when the chicks hatch they are a lot less likely to have problems from the other hens. One didn't mess with Donk when she became senior.., or her mother Dink when she was alive.
7) rooster attention is almost guaranteed when you're a senior hen. The rooster may mate with the juniors but because the other hens follow the senior hen, the rooster has to as well.


There are many other more subtle aspects, right down to having keepers who have got to know the senior hens better than the juniors and have a better idea when things are not right with that hen.

The most successful mother was BlueSpot. She rarely lost a chick.
Barking Bracket on the other hand had trouble remembering she had chicks at all.

The farm I worked on in Hertfordshire used to enable the senior hens to sit and hatch in preference to the juniors. So did my Uncle, although he was a lot more hands off mainly because his tribes were feral.

3)

 

[Shadrach]

I do the same. Most years it covers my costs completely. How much do you ask? I charge £1.50 per carton of 6. To continue covering costs, I think I'll have to put the price up next year, as a sack of grain has risen from £8 for 25kg when I started in 2017, to over £11 for 20kg now

I'm selling half a dozen for £1.50. I'll be putting the price up next month.

 

[Shadrach]

That's a lot of eggs! What do you do with the rest, feed it all back to the chicken ?

Having good relationships with some of the allotment holders is nice and could turn out to be useful , it's certainly not a waste of time!
The geese stay out on their own or do you take them out with the chickens ?

I've been eating more and giving a few away to people I know are short of money. I hard boil a few for a man here in his eighties who doesn't cook or shop but likes eggs.

 

[Perris]

I'm selling half a dozen for £1.50. I'll be putting the price up next month.

someone did say I could make a better job of marketing my eggs, given my keeping arrangements. I think the phrase was 'blessed by fairies' or something similar

 

[Shadrach]

Tax. I think this look means she's definitely taken over my table as her territory.
View attachment 3175651

Théo attacked my hand this morning. I think I got too near his head. Usually he crowes when he wants to remind me the hens are his.
View attachment 3175652

What great pictures.

 

[Shadrach]

This thread has reached the quarter million views.
I did not expect anything like this response when I started it. It was, as I have written near the begining, more of a diary which would not necessarily be of much interest to most.

I would like to thank all of you who have read, contributed and supported this thread. It wouldn't have happened without you all.
Also thank you for trying to keep the thread on topic and paying your taxes.

 

[no fly zone]

Here's an older picture of Skeksis and an Orpington named Elizabeth we used to have.

 

[DobieLover]

I'm selling half a dozen for £1.50. I'll be putting the price up next month.

When I started out with my flock a little over 4 years ago the price of a 50 lb bag of feed was $17.99. The last three times I went to the feed store to get feed the price had gone up each time. The last time at the local feed store I always go to the price was at $26.49. That is a nearly a 50% increase in feed cost.
I was selling eggs at $3.00 a dozen and recently kicked it up to $4.00 and I'm still having a hard time meeting demand.

This thread has reached the quarter million views.
I did not expect anything like this response when I started it. It was, as I have written near the begining, more of a diary which would not necessarily be of much interest to most.

I would like to thank all of you who have read, contributed and supported this thread. It wouldn't have happened without you all.
Also thank you for trying to keep the thread on topic and paying your taxes.

It's highly educational and hopefully helping some of the people out there who tend to treat their birds the way you'd treat a puppy or kitten instead of like a flock of chickens and give them what they need as a species.

Tax.
Tink, aka Little Momma, taking an afternoon dust bath. I actually managed to capture her mid flipping around in the dust cloud.

Her on another day heading back into the nest.

 

[ManueB]

I hope you've entered this is in the crowing rooster competition! It's a fabulous photo

And you should submit this one for the caption contests here:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...on-contest-photo-submission-thread-5.1504640/

I got myself a really cheap smartphone, I believe the quality of the photo it takes is slightly below what is required to enter. And I'm forbidding myself from looking at all those picture competition threads because someone thinks I should be helping him work instead of spending time on my phone!