Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[TheFatBlueCat]

Is linseed straw stiffer than say oat straw, or mixed grass?

It is stiff, but it is chopped much shorter than hay or other types of straw, sort of in-between chaff and hay. I can squish it in my hand and it crackles but after that intitial crush it's then quite bouncy and nice. I'd say it is most like lucerne (alfalfa) hay in structure.

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

Photos of the linseed straw:

 

[Ribh]

That makes me feel sick...

 

[Shadrach]

It's an interesting point of view. What is often said (about foxes at least) is that once a predator knows the chickens are there, it'll keep coming back till it's had them all, so you'd lose the whole flock anyway, but to predation rather than sickness. And that was my experience for the first 2 flocks, the first predated from trees at night, the second from the garden during the day. But the last fox attack here was May 2020; a neighbour with semi-free range production hens is still losing birds to foxes, so they're still around, but they're not bothering with us, even when, as a few nights back, someone(s) sleep(s) out. 5 roos on the premises no doubt has something to do with that, but I'm not sure I want to experiment with more sleeping out, even if there are more tree huggers amongst the youngsters (Amadeo has already shown his inclinations in that regard).

Do you plan to leave the pop door between coop and run open, or closed?

Have you noticed any temperature difference? Maybe that as well as the lack of mites is encouraging them to break the habit of a lifetime and roost in the new coop. Thankfully it's cooler here on the coast, max of 30 C expected today.

What got your chickens in the trees?
The idea is to leave the pop door open. I'm hoping between the outer run fence and the coop run fence it will be reasonably secure.
Yup, it's cooler in the new coop; not much but some. What the new coop has is good basic ventilation. It's not enough yet but the air above the chickens is moving. It didn't move much in the old coop unless the wind blew in the pop door.

 

[Shadrach]

Fox are opportunists predators and will take the easy prey. I think that is part of the reason why they come back once they know the setting and what their chance of success is. However sometimes they will have a behaviour that contradicts this either because they are very hungry or because they need to feed their family, like the attack I mentioned on our neighbour farmer Gaston's chicks, where the fox passed through a dozen herding dogs and an Anatolian LGD.

Our coop being a basement under our living room is secure from almost anything except rats, but I would say a big part of the security comes from sharing our house with the chickens. Though muffled when we're inside we hear what's going on in the coop and run. If we have our windows open it's like the chickens were in our room. There's no way a fox.would have the time to get in the run, which is not so secure, without us hearing it.

I hadn't included your setup. The Catalan farmhouses with the open hay lofts were also surprisngly secure as are most of the stone and brick built additions to these farm houses.

 

[Shadrach]

That is quick. I remember you mentioned this before .
But a fox couldn't get in the run without us hearing it before, not once it was in - it would have to go through a fencing first then dig or climb to get in the run. It's not as secure as the coop, but it's still relatively safe. We feel it's safe enough in regard to our environment to have left the hens several times alone at night.
Of course, it's very different from leaving the chickens alone at night for many nights in a row, not talking about every nights like at the allotments.

Further up the mountain where I lived dogs became a major problem. People lost sheep, chicken, dogs, ducks. Lots of this happened during the Covid movement restrictions. People from the nearby conurbations came up the mountains to walk their dogs and just let them off the lead. The farmers complained and nothing happened so they shot any dog off the lead on their property. They killed a few before the message struck home.
There were also those dogs who get left to guard a fenced property while the owners were away (many stayed in Barcelona during the week) who escaped/broke out and went hunting at night. A couple of these would make short work of the hoop coop I'm making.

 

[Shadrach]

As promised, Maria and her chicks, Hafod and Whitford
View attachment 3220324
Chirk appears to have been firing a lot of blanks, and given he's in full moult now, that makes sense for 3 weeks ago. Poor Maria had been broken twice, and then watched 2 juniors-to-her have broods, so when she went broody again, I felt I had to let her sit even though the time of year was not ideal for it.

Love the names.

 

[Perris]

What got your chickens in the trees?
The idea is to leave the pop door open. I'm hoping between the outer run fence and the coop run fence it will be reasonably secure.
Yup, it's cooler in the new coop; not much but some. What the new coop has is good basic ventilation. It's not enough yet but the air above the chickens is moving. It didn't move much in the old coop unless the wind blew in the pop door.

I'm not entirely sure. Fox, I think, initially because they roosted too low, or came down too early.

 

[Perris]

Love the names.

Home bred birds get welsh place names, ideally pronouncable ones

 

[Shadrach]

This is how I mainly get mine, or add some from my incubator to her. However it's not cost effective. I figured out in 2017 it cost around $7 USA a lb in feed cost. That was non GMO feed to keep 6 hens, a rooster and raising the chicks to 16 weeks. What eggs I ate or sold was deducted from feed cost, which was $4 USA a dz feed cost. I was paying 33 cents a lb for non GMO feed, it's now conventional feed at 70 cents a lb. The farmer I was getting it from sold out.

The local farmers market sold pasture CX fed non GMO for $6 a lb and $5 for brown eggs. ... Not as good as mine but acceptable.

Grocery store sells organic CX for around $3.50 a lb, and the same for organic eggs... but not anywhere close to farmers market items.

I agree, it's not cost effective in purely financial terms.
Ignoring all the "awww, they're so cute with moma" stuff there are some distinct advantages for the fully free range and the locked in at night ranging model.
For keepers that free range, not necessarily on large properties and can keep males, broody hatching makes a lot of sense. Get this right and you can have eggs and broodies hatching. The broodies are not only hatching future generations, they are providing meat in the guise of the chickens one can't afford to keep for whatever reason.
This is my favourite model but for many killing what they've seen raised is too difficult.
One also does away with the weeks of chick care (incubated or bought) and integration problems and if the parents are healthy one can be fairly confident they will produce heathy offspring.

Good job I don't expect the allotment chickens to pay their way.