Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Solanacae]

Horticulture chatter and protective clothing tax

 

[Iluveggers]

What ? Purslane is precious !!! It's packed with nutrients . We eat it in salads and Purslane fritters are a traditional recipe. It's even sold on local producers markets.

If it wasn’t everywhere and crowding out my garden plantings, I wouldn’t mind it. But if it chokes out the vegetables I actually want to grow, then it has to go. Lol

I'm also really curious to see how mine will integrate /evolve. For now, the only chick that finds grace in our bantam Chipie's eye is Merle, who is also a bantam and we were hoping they become friends. However she looks nothing like her color wise.

Please keep us updated!

I have this problem, but I don't want to give this boy up. He is such a great rooster, and so handsome. The girls love him, and he isn't aggressive to them, but they do have some broken feathers. It seems to bother me, more than the hens. His father is big also, but he prefers the big brahma hens. Goliath, the one pictured, loves the naked necks most of all.
View attachment 3217963
My tax, by the way.

Wow, he is a big boy. Very handsome, love his coloring and leg feathering!

Cordelia had an impacted crop which took a few days to resolve once I realized what the problem was. Her crop was slow to clear for a while after that, so I used a “crop bra” to support the muscles in the crop while they regained their tone after being stretched out.

Would grit help prevent this? Although my ladies are out & about, I do have a small bowl available to them, and on occasion someone will take a few nibbles, I’m guessing because they need it.

Spoke to my local Menonite feed guy today. He usually doesn’t keep grower feed through the winter but said he will order a bag for me every few weeks. We were talking about protein content, and I explained that 21% protein year-round is important to me. I’ll add oyster shell and crushed eggshells once we get some eggs. That way I can supplement with fresh veggie scraps (we have a lot of them), without depleting the protein too much. He is a wonderful person to buy from!

Will get some tax pics when I run out to the garden, Shad, I promise!

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

I almost bought a house in Nelson.

It's a nice area to live in I live in Motueka, which is a country town about 45mins away from Nelson.


I had a whole collection of quotes to reply to I'd been grabbing as I read the thread yesterday. But I deleted them accidentally when I was replying, and it doesn't seem like there is an undo button?

Anyway, I mostly wanted to comment on the lavender gene feathers being more fragile. I've got two lavender araucanas and they always have the worst feathers. I'm not sure I'd call them brittle but they definitely get tatty fast. I also read somewhere it was a known issue with the colour.

I have just had a delivery of a large bale of linseed straw. I've not tried it before, but there was a guy delivering them from down south so I went for it. It's a large square bale, which is about the volume of 10-13 regular small bales. The intent is it will be coop and nest bedding, and garden mulch. I'll report back on how I find it.

 

[janiedoe]

That is some serious size difference. Can he stand on the smaller hens shoulders during mating?
I agree that the feather damage tends to upset the keeper more than the hens. Some hens are a lot better at saying no than others. The problem I have with a few of the Ex Battery hens is they always say yes! Now I can quite understand the desire to get a bit of action in while they can and Henry is a handsome chap and all that. I have told them to run. Henry won't bother chasing them from what I've seen.
When I started in Catalonia most of the Marans hens had feather loss problems but then there were more roosters than hens. My main concern at the time was sunburn. Once they got their tribes sorted out and the hens had a moult they were fine after.

He stands on either side of the smaller hens, but the necked necks, he mounts. They all follow him and squat. He does love the langshan, and a few of the younger brahmas. They don't have the same feather wear. I think the nn girls have such scant feathering, that it doesn't take much to destroy their feathers.
I have been putting an all natural sunscreen on one of my girls. She doesn't mind too much, but she looks like a muddy little pig after a dust bath.

 

[janiedoe]

If it wasn’t everywhere and crowding out my garden plantings, I wouldn’t mind it. But if it chokes out the vegetables I actually want to grow, then it has to go. Lol

Please keep us updated!

Wow, he is a big boy. Very handsome, love his coloring and leg feathering!

Would grit help prevent this? Although my ladies are out & about, I do have a small bowl available to them, and on occasion someone will take a few nibbles, I’m guessing because they need it.

Spoke to my local Menonite feed guy today. He usually doesn’t keep grower feed through the winter but said he will order a bag for me every few weeks. We were talking about protein content, and I explained that 21% protein year-round is important to me. I’ll add oyster shell and crushed eggshells once we get some eggs. That way I can supplement with fresh veggie scraps (we have a lot of them), without depleting the protein too much. He is a wonderful person to buy from!

Will get some tax pics when I run out to the garden, Shad, I promise!

My chickens love purslane. When I pull it out of the beds, I always toss it to them.
Thank you. Goliath is the product of a blue easter egger over a dark brahma hen...an experiment that went well. His sister is even prettier, oddly enough.

 

[Borders3]

Hello janiedoe. I see you've been reading from the alerts. The thread has got rather long. There is another person working their way through the posts, @Borders3 .
I'm pleased you've been enjoying the thread. It's a diary mainly, but thanks to the diversity of the thread contributors and their knowledge there is quite a lot of information in here somewhere.
The links are worth reading as they fill in much of the detail on various topics.
I'm not sure much of the thread would appeal to non chicken people Maybe one needs a certain amount of chicken madness to appreciate some of the content.
Welcome to the thread.

Hi Shadrach yes I am enjoying the thread but don't want to miss anything so started at the beginning and am up to page 405 March this year. Will start commenting when I have caught up and start paying tax.

 

[Solanacae]

Would grit help prevent this? Although my ladies are out & about, I do have a small bowl available to them, and on occasion someone will take a few nibbles, I’m guessing because they need it.

I’ve always had grit available free choice, along with egg/oyster shell. I’m not entirely sure why she developed an impacted crop, but it was a pretty easy fix thanks to some articles in BYC. I turned to the crop bra when she had a slow moving crop following the impaction clearing. I figured the muscles had been stretched out like a postpartum uterus or sprained ankle and would benefit from some support while they healed, kind of like an Ace Bandage. It seems to have worked, as she is acting much happier now. She hasn’t started laying again yet, though I’m not sure if that’s because she’s still gaining strength back from the lack of food via the impaction, the heat, or a combination of both.

 

[Solanacae]

My chickens love purslane. When I pull it out of the beds, I always toss it to them.
Thank you. Goliath is the product of a blue easter egger over a dark brahma hen...an experiment that went well. His sister is even prettier, oddly enough.

I think this statement requires both several pictures of the sister and a few more of Goliath so we can all fairly judge for ourselves.

 

[janiedoe]

I think this statement requires both several pictures of the sister and a few more of Goliath so we can all fairly judge for ourselves.

Proof...here's Cookie

This is ButterBean. I rehomed him recently. He was so sweet and smart, but the hens didn't love him like they do Goliath. They are half brothers.

These babies are Goliath's offsprings

& Big Papa Doris, Goliath's & Bean's father

I have a soft spot for roosters, but as you can see, Cookie is so pretty that she outshines them all.

 

[Shadrach]

It probably isn’t the same variety, but here is a similar one I’ve planted. It was very productive in my old garden, it doesn’t seem to be as well suited to the clay soil here and hasn’t grown particularly well. It’s a variation on a paste tomato, though much larger, curved, and pointy on the end than the more common “Roma” type paste tomatoes available here. The Roma type tomatoes are more prone to blossom end rot than this one, which is why I liked growing it.


I think a key difference is here is melanin levels in the skin. People with light skin cannot handle as much sun exposure without negative effects.

Cordelia had an impacted crop which took a few days to resolve once I realized what the problem was. Her crop was slow to clear for a while after that, so I used a “crop bra” to support the muscles in the crop while they regained their tone after being stretched out. For a few days, I kept it on constantly until I could feel that her crop was emptying overnight. She hated it, but even more that I was handling her so much when I would take it off during the day and on at night so she could dust bathe better. We were both relieved when she had several mornings in a row of an empty crop with no support. I would imagine that some chickens would have similar feelings regarding aprons.

Do you think the crop bra helped?
I haven't used one but have thought about it with one hen in particular.