Took a fall in the coop banged the knee up one deeper wound on the lower leg. I will be fine put silver on all of them .. no more bleeding but 2 bled good.
That was closing the coop for the night.
Funny but smudge had gotten off the perch to stand next to me prone ?
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I hope you heal up quickly, Penny! It does seem like Smudge came over to check up on you.
I have a hypothesis for the collective consideration of those on this thread:
The notoriously short lifespan of 'battery/production breed' chickens is more attributable to their diet (100% industrially produced starter/grower/layer feed until/if 'rescued') than to their genes. Discuss.
I think this is a great discussion topic. I think environmental factors will certainly affect the expression of what a creature is genetically predisposed to do, but you can’t override it completely.
My parents have family histories of diabetes (maternal side) and heart disease (paternal side) and have made a conscious effort to lead a healthy, active lifestyle in an effort to reduce the risk that they have in their family history. Their philosophy is that they will get it eventually, but they can postpone it as long as possible. I think they have been quite successful - my mom’s siblings are all diabetic or pre-diabetic while she is not, and my dad is on blood thinners but is keeping his cholesterol levels within normal ranges. I realize that both diabetes and heart disease can run in families simply because poor diets can be part of a family’s learned culture, but there is definitely a genetic component as well that can predispose a person to said diseases as well.
One of the things on BYC that drives me bonkers is the “don’t feed your hens too many treats just commercial feed” argument. I don’t understand how that can be controlled if your chickens have access to pasture/yard/grass/whatever you call it. If I give my chickens kale and collard greens, that is considered a “treat”. If they forage and eat a ton of grass and bugs, it is not a treat. I personally think for the most part chickens can regulate what they need. Yes maybe they will gorge on something if they have access to it but I think eventually they’ll stop eating it, for example a heap of berries. My girls have local feed available from morning til roost, but also have grass & bugs to choose from, along with the occasional melon rind or other scrap. As they get older I will probably give them more scraps, and let them regulate their own bellies. Do you guys feel strongly one way or another?
Also, I doubt feed alone is the cause of production hens issues. If they are confined to a cage lack of exercise and forage might be a problem. I don’t think excess calcium from layer food would be an issue since they are usually removed from production if they stop laying or slow too much.
I’ve gotten that advice too when asking about a hen with a saggy abdomen - it was not ascites, as I worried, but an excess of abdominal fat. I told only to feed commercial feed and stop giving them vegetable trimmings. What is funny is that no one bothered to ask if I had the commercial feed available 24/7 or if I fed a measured amount. The hen in question, Saoirse, is a pig. And I do have feed available 24/7, except for when I was battling a mouse problem at my old place for a time. She eats a ton, but she’s also the most physically active of all my chickens as well, and the best at escaping from the chicken area to go on self-guided tours of the backyard. I decided not to worry too much about it, since rationing feed isn’t practical with my current schedule. Over time, the excess fat has gone away, so perhaps she has solved that on her own.
I think the nutritional quality of the kitchen scraps makes a difference. Trimmings from fruits and vegetables, I really don’t understand how they could be harmful to the chicken. Some scraps they eat, others they don’t. I don’t put grains or meat in my compost pile, so what scraps mine get are nutrient rich but not calorie dense. I have a friend that feeds all her food scraps to her chickens to save money on their feed. She’ll even get expired canned food for free/almost free for the same purpose. Such food will be high sodium and have far less nutrients, but unfortunately that is her approach to keeping chickens. She grew up in a farm and definitely has the mentality where one puts in the minimum amount of space and feeds the lowest quality pellets to keep her costs down. She doesn’t like poop on her lawn, so they don’t get to forage at all. She says her eggs don’t taste any different than store eggs (not surprising) but she likes watching them and likes that they eat her food scraps, so she keeps them. I must add that she is a lovely person, and has many admirable qualities, we just don’t have the same approach to keeping chickens.
I digress. I’ve read here in BYC of a fair number of production breed hens that have lived a long life, most of which seem to not be ex-batt but not all of the anecdotes specified how they got the chicken. There are also a lot of people who have production breeds die early because of the reproductive problems they are known to have. The problem I see is that there’s not really any good comparative data on these breeds because most battery hens are not rescued after the egg factories decide their time is up. You are left with anecdotes about longevity in places like BYC and that’s about it.
Good point. Does anyone have any actual stats on this? And do we (if so, how?) distinguish between hatchery-grade heritage breeds and not-mass-produced-heritage breeds?
Spot on! No matter what the issue or problem, someone on any BYC thread can be guaranteed to pipe up that the problem is 'treats' and the solution is commercial feed only. The educator in me feels compelled to try to make such people just stop and think for a minute.
On genes v diet, I'm sure I've seen posts by people who have production breeds but have had them since chicks (not as spent rescues), and have treated them like backyard chickens not industrial production units, and they lived normal length lives (at least, more than 4 years). Anyone here experienced that?
The ISA Browns I bought by accident are too young for me to weigh in on the longevity question, but mine started laying at 20 and 21 weeks as best I could figure based on wing development when I got them to guess when they hatched. Part of this could be the feed, and part of this could be daylight coming in to play because I got them as chicks in October and they began to lay in January. 20-21 weeks to first egg is still mighty fast, but it’s still a month later than the 16 weeks that some say their production breeds start laying. I was relieved they didn’t start any sooner. They had access to my compost pile and a large area to roam around, plus foraging in the backyard in the evenings at the time, and now get to forage in a portion of the backyard all day. Granted it’s not truly free ranging and their forage options are somewhat limited, but they have ample space and are out happily hunting for tasty things every morning as soon as the pop door opens. They are more active foragers than my Marans, Sussex, Wyandotte cross, and Sultans, and about par with Saoirse (an EE with Ameraucana heritage), the Marans/Legbar cross, and my Dominique.
When given a choice of where they want to be the chickens will go to where they are most comfortable. 
