Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Perris]

My chickens don’t poop on the sand floor in the coop. I find this very pleasant.
They poop when they roost and in the run, where flies come to eat from the feast meal or the rain washes out the feaces. Sometimes there is a oops in the nestbox to clean.
And when free range they poop in the garden and on the terrace. So I do have to clean the terrace regularly.

I have poop trays under the roosts (and no coop floor as such) which are easy to slide in and out to clean, and an ordinary poop is fine to pick as is, but a caecal one most definitely is not With shavings on the trays, it is possible to smother and shift a caecal poop without getting my fingers mucky. In terms of physics, it's a bit like coating a chocolate truffle with cocoa or whatever (to compare something gross with something delicious!)

 

[ManueB]

We're back from 5 days hiking in the mountains. As the weather was uncertain we didn't take our tents as usual, but slept every night in refuges. It was a bit expensive for our budget but that way we had lighter bags, could hike higher altitudes and ate wonderful Italian food - probably our most luxurious holiday in the last five years .

My youngest cousin and a friend of hers kept our house and chickens in the meantime and everything went fine- I was much less worried than when our city friends take over, as she has some farming experience.
She spent the last year biking through Spain and Portugal with her boyfriend and they stayed as woofers in a number of small farms. She had a few curious anecdotes about what she saw regarding chicken keeping and feeding, apparently caring for the chickens is one of the tasks often given to the woofers.
She mentioned that in one farm in Portugal she had to make a mash with bread, water, wheat, corn, and the minced remains of the previous night's dinner. The interesting part is that this was food not only for the chickens but also for the cats and pigs .

Our teenage gang has grown in five days and they now spend most of the day with the ex-batts, inside the chicken netted zone. I take this as a sign that coexistence may become possible!

 

[RoyalChick]

We're back from 5 days hiking in the mountains. As the weather was uncertain we didn't take our tents as usual, but slept every night in refuges. It was a bit expensive for our budget but that way we had lighter bags, could hike higher altitudes and ate wonderful Italian food - probably our most luxurious holiday in the last five years .
View attachment 3253573
View attachment 3253574
View attachment 3253575

My youngest cousin and a friend of hers kept our house and chickens in the meantime and everything went fine- I was much less worried than when our city friends take over, as she has some farming experience.
She spent the last year biking through Spain and Portugal with her boyfriend and they stayed as woofers in a number of small farms. She had a few curious anecdotes about what she saw regarding chicken keeping and feeding, apparently caring for the chickens is one of the tasks often given to the woofers.
She mentioned that in one farm in Portugal she had to make a mash with bread, water, wheat, corn, and the minced remains of the previous night's dinner. The interesting part is that this was food not only for the chickens but also for the cats and pigs .

Our teenage gang has grown in five days and they now spend most of the day with the ex-batts, inside the chicken netted zone. I take this as a sign that coexistence may become possible!
View attachment 3253576

Wonderful pictures. Glad you had a lovely holiday.

 

[ManueB]

I agree but I don't know if that's possible. For example, a lot of oil is used in the gearboxes of those giant windmills. And the batteries for the electric cars require mining for precious materials mostly in third world countries. Not arguing, just adding to your thoughts.

Sheesh! Who do they think they are .. disallowing donkeys on trains.

That also means the era of the internal combustion engine is over as well. It still is a hard sell to the automotive industry and the energy companies.
If it had been up to me, I would have gone for city trams and highspeed rail under public ownership.

Interesting discussion, and I also enjoyed all the pictures of beautiful chickens that came with it as tax.
My point of view is that we're deluding ourselves thinking technology will allow us to go green and still live the same way, or change only small things in our lives. I think we're way too late for that, and that your Spanish guy doing his donkey thing is a more probable future whether we like it or not. I would like to be wrong!

We have public transportation in France. It is way better than in the UK but nowhere near what would be necessary for the majority of the people to be able to use it. And donkeys are not allowed , that's to say in many trains and buses you can't take a bike with you which makes multimodal very difficult.

Ordinarily yes, but because their broody was so low in the hierarchy, I've had to duck and dive to feed this clutch from the start, and now when I put out food in direction A, these 7 know to run round to the opposite side of the house, where I will appear shortly with something just for them . Of the June clutch, Ida has started popping into the utility room for a private feed as required. I think all the birds in the flock know that if they come to the back door I'll offer them food, inside or out as they wish, and if they time it right, there won't be any competition.

That's one of the ways chickens won my heart- they are so clever about food .

Nasty scare this morning: went out to poo pick the coops and a large hawk took off from the top of the plane tree that overlooks the main lawn here . No chicken in sight anywhere, and Maria screaming the alert. I found all the roos and mature hens on the other side of the house in or under the post-breakfast lounge tree, apparently oblivious to what was happening there.

After half an hour of anxious rummaging in beds and borders, I'm happy to report that all chicks are accounted for, even the lightest coloured one with a large white crest (who thus might as well have a target on her back). Phew. I do wish one of the sub roos would realize that one of them should be looking after the youngsters.

Scary indeed ! Hopefully the youngsters recognize an alert call by now ? I hope the hawk doesn't come back after them.

I said I wouldn't let the hens out into the allotments untill mid September after the last time. Some people still have a few delicate veg growing. The allotment crew let me down badly today. C came to visit for a while. I was standing on the inside of the allotment run gate and C on the other. I'm sort of gate leaning country style with my arms folded and the next thing I know there's an Ex Battery hen perched next to me, then another and the next flew straight over. I opened the gate to usher the one on the outside in and the two on the gate jumped down on the outisde and headed off into the nearest patch.
Next theng I know one of the hens did the right chaps lets make a run for it call and they all came steaming through the gate, Henry sauntering along at the back.
I looked at C and sort of shrugged my shoulders.

Ha ha ha !
After a summer with free ranging chicks and a garden that wasn't conceived at all with that in mind, we can conclude that four chicks can do very severe damage. If I hadn't ended up protecting the kale, broccolis, chards, salads and beets, there would be none left- in fact there is none left in the rows I didn't protect . Now we know how it goes, next summer we will have all chick-sensitive vegetables in the same place so that it's easier to protect those.

Nice, brings all my memories back! I lived in Antibes (close to Nice) for three months in a summer of many many years ago. Perhaps the best three months of my life. I was young and fell in love ...

I thought the food was incredible. Every meal I had was great, but perhaps this was in contrast to the terrible food I had in the US right before.

View attachment 3252120
View attachment 3252121

Many many years ago you could still eat very fresh produce (vegetables or fish) on the coast in Nice or Antibes and I think that's what made the difference. Now it's only the case in few places. That's why I like food in Italy - it's still very much local and fresh.

We use shredded paper for bedding. It's free I think, I'm not resonsible for the supply and currently can't justify the expense of supplying an alternative.
Habit. The tribe coops in Catalonia didn't have bedding, except for the nest boxes, not did my uncles coops. Everybody roosted on bars.
We don't get a consistant size of shredded paper; some fat and long, some thin and short. The thin and short is better. I clean the coop every day and take out the bedding with poop on. 15 hens is a lot of poop. We get through a lot of paper.

The pastic floor is easy to clean with a paint scraper and I get a better idea of the quality of the poop. It's hard to tell in the paper mainly because when I get to the coop the hens have kicked a lot of it around.
I am more likely to clean the floor properly, sweep and scrub out if there isn't bedding to get out first.
The sweeping gets a lot of the dander and dust out with is healthier and a damp brush dipped in disinfectant and water helps to discourage mites. It doesn't need to be soaked every time but even a damp brush helps.

We've had quite a bit of rain and the coop doesn't smell damp and stale even though the shredded paper soakes up the damp from the wet hens in the coop.

You've certainly made a great improvement to their housing condition with this new coop! My ex-batts took to roosting four or five days after we got them, so I think habit isn't the only reason. Two of my three months old still sleep in the nest in the wall : they tried roosting two nights in a row and they didn't like it .

On the down side they've got another one to replace her. Given how we are still subjects of the monarchy and not citizens with a charter, or rights bill, we didn't get a vote on the matter.

What we have to watch out for now is the new Tory ministers don't slip some futher divisive and underhand laws through while the faithful are watching the TV.

Opium of the people ?
If you had a vote about this now, do you believe the majority of UK citizens would chose to end the monarchy ?

 

[RoyalChick]

Opium of the people ?

That is religion not royalty!

 

[Perris]

probably our most luxurious holiday in the last five years

stunning scenery - and apparently not another soul in sight!

She mentioned that in one farm in Portugal she had to make a mash with bread, water, wheat, corn, and the minced remains of the previous night's dinner.

sounds good to me

Our teenage gang has grown in five days and they now spend most of the day with the ex-batts, inside the chicken netted zone. I take this as a sign that coexistence may become possible!

yay!

we're deluding ourselves thinking technology will allow us to go green and still live the same way, or change only small things in our lives

I agree. We're beyond tweaking to fix the system. And new technologies usually come with a downside, it's just not obvious what that is for a while. Wonderful thing, hindsight.

next summer we will have all chick-sensitive vegetables in the same place so that it's easier to protect those.

what a great idea - fence the vulnerable veg rather than the chickens!

 

[Perris]

The June clutch are 14 weeks old tomorrow, and Ida is looking like a demure debutant

Meanwhile the July clutch are 10 weeks today, and Killay is sporting a terrific pea comb - much better than his mum's - so I assume he's carrying the blue egg gene

 

[lightm]

The political climate and actual climate in NJ.

Oh my condolences to you.

 

[lightm]

It's Sunday and my day off.
Some know I'm a dubstep and modern dance fan.
This was the video that got Non Stop the attention.

And one more later video.

Some dubstep that really hooked me up more than 10 years ago, when Skrillex wasn't mainstream yet.

Tax: Wendy molting

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good afternoon one and all!

81 cloudy 72% humidity feels like 89 rain showers off and on today.

Have a great day!