Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Perris]

Sorry about that - hate when that happens. I couldn't figure a way around the pay wall but here is a link to the organization itself. The article was quite good. Basically they are doing research on behavior and preferences of farm animals. They are interesting because they are trying to do high quality research but in a very animal-centric ethical way based on a belief that farm animals are smart sentient beings with individual personalities.
One highlighted in the article was trying to test if learning new skills brought joy to chickens.
https://www.farmsanctuary.org/sanctuary-based-research/

that's really good - the whole project as well as that particular bit of research. Thanks for the link!

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning and happy Thanksgiving to one and all!

67 mostly cloudy 95% humidity feels like 65 rain 49%.

@Shadrach Sorry to hear about your family being sick with Covid.

Take care of yourself while tending to their needs.

Get a good mask to wear.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family!

 

[Shadrach]

Why do you Brittish and US-Americano’s use inches and feet.
I might be 1 inch longer but I don’t like to check tonight.


. Poor chickens, poor Schad.
How many cm of water did you get today?

If there’s much loam or clay in the ground I do recommend drains or several deep holes filled with pebbles. That way the water sinks in the ground quickly. Worked for me. But maybe the amount of water we have here from time to time is less extreme?

Drainage would help a lot I'm certain. I don't keep track of the amount of rainfall. I only keep track of the wind speeds and direction.

 

[BDutch]

there are lots of pros and cons. But one of the biggest pros imho is that our politicians have to take responsibility for things here now. They can no longer shrug their shoulders and blame the EU for whatever.

I know the Dutch were furious about it but I hope you can forgive us in due course.

I’m not furious. But some some people in trade were (we have a trade oriented, business like gov.).

Thought it was just plain stupid. Because it made many things in the EC more easy. I mainly remember how easy it was to open up ; not to change money when traveling through Europe , to cross borders, to use a mobile for the same price as it is in my own country. For people in international businesses the advantages were much bigger of course. And for factories (big and small) importing and exporting became easy peasy.

I wonder what the advantages the British have now compared to pre-Brexit. I don’t see any. Neither do my chickens:

My chickens before Brexit.

And after Brexit.

 

[Shadrach]

I can't answer for the yanks, but the UK started adopting decimal measures for most things in 1971.

However, while the change was made dramatic for currency, it wasn't for measures (ever the pragmatists) and e.g. miles and pints have stayed in common usage, and feet and inches too for quite a lot of us, even people born after 1971 (because our kids are surrounded by people who don't think or speak in metric measures). You might find this website entertaining https://ukma.org.uk/ - still campaigning for the change, 51 years later

Ultimately imperial measures, so called, are based on body parts, and they are easier to visualize and use than abstract measures based on once-and-ideally-but-no-longer-accurate measurements of the circumference (horizontally) of the earth. (And they were invented by the French, which doesn't help with adoption here of course.)

I'm mostly metric and have been for many years. Getting used to the metric system for volume and distance took the longest.

 

[BDutch]

ditto. I reached my limit of free articles a long time ago

Clear all cookies might help?

 

[Shadrach]

Or that he just wants to ensure that he gets first dibs on exit?

That's the most common reason I think. Like everything related to behaviour the keeping circumstamces have a major influence.
Take the escort call. This basic test is what happens if a hen makes this call and her rooster is brought to her.
Then what happens if another rooster is brough to her.
I've brought food instead of a rooster. They eat but still call inbetween beak fulls.
I've brought best mate hens to the one calling. Sometimes they both end up calling.
If after repeated trials only the hens rooster stops her calling then it's a first step in saying the hen was calling for her rooster if nothing else shuts her up.
It goes on from there. What happens if she calls and hasn't laid an egg. What does the rooster do when he hears that call. I must have watched hundreds of these exchanges.
After seeing an event and recognising a sequence the next step is to form a theory as to why it happens. If it all hangs together the theory looks promising.
If a lot of keepers even in not so similar circumstances report similar behaviour the theory starts to look more solid.
With lab style experiments one usually already has a theory. It's necessary to set up the experiment. At the end of the majority of such lab experiments all that can be said is under these conditions, this is what happened. They don't tell you anything about what might happen in other conditions.

My view is the behaviour in field observations and then theory building is more likely to give what can be described as natural basic behaviour of which there will be modifications depending on circumstances.

 

[Marie2020]

Yeah. Napoleon did achieve a few clever things to make live easier.
British people obvious rather listen to their belly guts then adopting the cleverness of others.

My belly has raged with everything going on. Don't listen too the tin men they don't speak for all of us. It's like living on quick sand you just have no control

The effects of leaving the EC and all its profits ( like having no boundaries) was one of the things you probably underestimated listening to your guts. Side effects like : enormous amounts of administrative tasks for import and export, risk of new troubles in Northern Ireland , AND Shad having to leave Catalonia, where not taken enough into account (IMHO).

That about broke my heart but one good thing came out of it , he's completely upgraded those chickens he is caring for now. They look a thousand times better

 

[Shadrach]

I trust C will step up to the chicken plate...

Yer avin a larf.
C cannot do it. C is at work and worse still on shifts.

 

[Shadrach]

This is behind a paywall for me

And me.