Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

The allotments are very quiet currently.
I know a couple who are dissapointed in what grew; a lot didn't.
Perhaps some will have learn't that even a small allotment needs quite a lot of care and that means time. Spending an hour or so once a week isn't going to hack it.
I finished a bit late this evening. I was working on the new run.
I mentioned earlier but the link was missing the h, that I intended to use these.
These might be of interest to you @Molpet or anyone else who is making a tarp covered tunnel run.

https://groundbolt.co.uk/erdanker-ground-anchors.html

Growers here use them for their polytunnels. I'm told they work.
Apparently the poly tunnels flex a lot in the wind. My frame will be stiffer. Given the roost bar in the run will be fixed to the wire frame at one end, the roost bar will move as the frame flexes. It's just like being up a proper tree I'll tell them if I get any complaints.

I seem to have constructed a muggers ally between the tow coops.

"Empty your pockets or I'll peck you bucket boy."

 

[BDutch]

It really does depend on the bread.
Supermarket packaged bread is full of crap.
Some of the independent bakers put stuff in I would rather they didn't.

You’re absolutely right Shad.
That’s why I buy most of my bread from a real baker in my town who bakes organic too. I get abdominal pain from some breads from the supermarket. Especially the bake off bread. I have to admit that I have a problem with more food (bacteria getting overactive bc of too much histamines). It’s probably the conservatives that give the pain / tiredness reaction.

I suppose that the organic bread is better for chickens over the bake off crap too.

 

[Shadrach]

The hen on the left is in a bit of a state. She's lost a lot of neck feathers through mating and she is having a moult of sorts.

This is one of the sick notes. She's having a proper dust bath which is an encouraging sign.

Henry.

 

[RoyalChick]

Can you get hold of it easily?

Well so far supply has not been the issue. It is a lot more expensive than the regular feed though so I have to believe it is better if you see what I mean.
So far it is holding up well to analysis and the chickens love it. The real test will be whether Maggie eats it when she molts. You may remember she is the one who stops eating commercial food when she molts and will only eat what she forages for.

 

[Shadrach]

Well so far supply has not been the issue. It is a lot more expensive than the regular feed though so I have to believe it is better if you see what I mean.
So far it is holding up well to analysis and the chickens love it. The real test will be whether Maggie eats it when she molts. You may remember she is the one who stops eating commercial food when she molts and will only eat what she forages for.

It would be interesting if the heavy moulters who went off their normal feed ate this.

 

[RoyalChick]

It would be interesting if the heavy moulters who went off their normal feed ate this.

I will report back when Maggie molts. RIght now seems to be grasshopper or cricket season so there is much pigging out happening in the field so not sure how much feed they will consume this week.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Tell Ya the birds here are so happy it has cooled off .. They are all over their yard dust bathing nice to see them relaxed and happy again.

 

[Molpet]

I've mentioned on other threads who's advice one pays heed to can be the difference between success and failure.
Unfortunately we now live in a world where everyone can publish their opinion and a current fashion is that each opinion is of equal value. It isn't.
When it comes to the majority of medical problems one can research the topic through the various online medical texts and find the information one needs.
There are exceptions. This for me was one such exception which demonstrates what I though was an interesting range of responses and even more so, an interesting result.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/nuerological-or-something-else.1318208/

Bracket was alive and well when I left Catalonia.

So, when seeking advice on an internnet forum try and check the probability that the person who is giving the advice has at least some experience of the problem you are faced with. Good intentions and empathy are great, but not much use when you've got a critical problem.
One way of checking is looking at profiles and photo albums.
On the profile page is is a small box with Find written in it. It offers Content, Threads and Articles.
There is a lot of regurgitating advice and information from other posts and medical texts. You can find all this yourself.

A lot of what I've learned about chickens and chicken keeping has come from observation and other chicken keepers I've known over the years. I learned very little from Internet forums until I got off the main drama boards and started reading the better articles and reading some of the threads from some of the more experienced chicken keepers.
Some of the most interesting and evenually proven to be useful information I found came from chicken keepers in Catalonia. There were as one might expect problems in translation, some of which were pretty funny.

One such piece of advice concerns the problem of Isolation and transportation.
Most people do not habitually move their chickens long distances. People involved in cock fighting and specialist breeding however do move chickens long distances, often to and from other countries.

I and the chickens found taking trips to the vets very stressfull when I started doing this. They don't like being caught and shoved in a strange container.
I mentioned this problem to one of my Catalonian friends and he told me to buy a pet transporter of the appropriate size and leave it open in a area where the chickens would see it and investigate it permenantly. He kept one in each of his runs for his game fowl. Each container was kept open and in his case filled with bedding. The cock and hen got used to the container and even built their nests in it after a while. Ushering a bird into one in such circumstances is virtually stress free for all. These days a plastic pet transporter are easiest to keep in good condition when outside. My friend still used the tradititional wicker basket.
I ended up with two. One I kept outside and another in my house.
View attachment 3205299View attachment 3205300View attachment 3205302

I use dog crates as nest boxes

The allotments are very quiet currently.
I know a couple who are dissapointed in what grew; a lot didn't.
Perhaps some will have learn't that even a small allotment needs quite a lot of care and that means time. Spending an hour or so once a week isn't going to hack it.
I finished a bit late this evening. I was working on the new run.
I mentioned earlier but the link was missing the h, that I intended to use these.
These might be of interest to you @Molpet or anyone else who is making a tarp covered tunnel run.

https://groundbolt.co.uk/erdanker-ground-anchors.html

Growers here use them for their polytunnels. I'm told they work.
Apparently the poly tunnels flex a lot in the wind. My frame will be stiffer. Given the roost bar in the run will be fixed to the wire frame at one end, the roost bar will move as the frame flexes. It's just like being up a proper tree I'll tell them if I get any complaints.

I seem to have constructed a muggers ally between the tow coops.

"Empty your pockets or I'll peck you bucket boy."
View attachment 3209454

I have seen similar anchors except they are twisted in, like how the above is removed.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

I figure I must owe some tax. Here's a few of my birds in their run. My run is about 100sqm, this is a small section of one side of it.

And Princess Fluffy Butt being her fabulous self. Gotta love the elegance of orpintons.

 

[Perris]

Grower is a good one to look at as they have to keep a low total calcium

Thanks for that tip. Oil is never above 10% in the mixed grain sacks I've bought, so that may offer a useful anchor point for now. If the CaCo3/limestone appears just before the additives, it's a fairly safe assumption that the relative quantity is small. What worries me is when it appears very high up, even above soya in e.g. the breeder in post 8022 and the layer in post 8100. Bear in mind too that the dicalcium phosphate, which is widely used in the pharmaceuticals industry as an inert shape-able and press-able carrier to encase an active ingredient into a swallow-able tablet, and which I guess is added to make the feed ingredients into pellet or crumb shape, is presumably adding more calcium and phosphorus.

can you link it tell me where to find it

https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/treats-for-chicks.77863/

I assume bread is bad

A widely shared assumption rarely questioned. "Despite the fact that chickens love treats like bread, it is not good for them in the long run. White bread isn't terribly healthy either when you think about it." is the intellectually lazy way bread is condemned without discussion in the article, and which is what brought out the little devil in me yesterday To my way of thinking, it is the author's duty to do the thinking (ideally after doing some proper research); the rhetorical sleight of hand is the giveaway that the author hasn't thought about it. It's like when someone says 'it needs no comment'; that phrase pops up when it most certainly does need some comment, but the author can't think what comment to make about it

I am guessing it isn’t enough to be an issue.

I think you're right