Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning one and all!

Temperature is in the 80s.

Have a great day!

 

[TropicalChickies]

Yes. She is 4 so should have a good set of antibodies to whatever pathogens live here, and has just one granddaughter as yet. She's got 3 eggs with her genes + 5 of assorted other flock members under her

Ahhh... I was planning to let Dusty sit on eggs if/when she goes broody, which I think she will. She was so committed to her last attempt even though I took her eggs and ruined her nest three times, poor girl. She has such a sweet energy seems like she really wants to be a mama. But she's only 11 mos old and I didn't think about the antibody thing. Hmm... Something else to consider.

 

[Shadrach]

I lived in Ireland for a year. 1995. On the west coast, county Dingle. Then I hitchhiked my way up the western coast, getting odd jobs along the way. In County Donegal, way up on Malin Head in a village called Muff, I herded sheep. Well, the border collies herded sheep while I watched and closed the gate when they were all in. Anyway, saw a lot of sheep shit. Sheep shit is pretty much grass, nettles, vetch, wildflowers etc ground up with whatever bugs were on the plants when the sheep ate it.

Sounds to me like the chickens are pretty smart for letting the sheep do the harvest and convenient delivery for them.

We kept sheep in Catalonia. The chickens boke open the sheep shit pellets and picked out the grains that didn't get digested properly.

 

[Shadrach]

When I bought commercial feed, I recall seeing the word "humedad" (humidity) on the ingredient label when I asked to see the big bag at the supply store. I take it this means the moisture content in the feed. I think it was 14%. I have a pretty good memory. I was buying crumble. It seems logical to me that pellets would retain the highest moisture content, then crumble, and mash would have the least moisture. As a farmer who grows and processes cacao beans, I know that the whole dried beans retain more moisture than when I crush the beans to "nibs." 1lb of whole beans crushed to nibs will weigh less than 1lb after two weeks of storage, whereas 1lb of stored beans stays 1 lb.

Anyway, point is that your allotment chickens likely aren't eating more actual food mass in the mash. It's just more dehydrated than the pellets which have more moisture by weight.

I weigh the dry feed before I add the water. I have a measure for the pellets and it's this I judge the feed intake on.

 

[fuzzi]

I started it, so I take responsibility and sincerely apologize. I only pointed out the infamous "dominion" passage as an example of a belief system that give people the wiggle room to justify not only horrific treatment of animals, but even the sixth mass extinction humans are causing now --
And still believe in one creator.

Given that I cited this article, I didn't think my response could be taken in support of "dominion"

https://www.forbes.com/sites/grrlsc...ion-event-will-be-worse-than-first-predicted/

And I made my own agnosticism clear

I certainly didn't mean to encourage religious prattle. I was trained as an historian and sometimes I forget that the belief systems I see from a detached observer standpoint are actually believed in by others.

Being said, I was at fault and my reference to Biblical dominion was not aligned with the guidelines of this site. I'm sorry and it won't happen again.

No offense was intended. It was just a quote from a classic that promoted taking good care of animals.

There's a wealth of literature that can be appreciated whether or not one agrees with the religious background of the author.

Peace.

 

[BDutch]

further to https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-27037569 and the reading done during the day, it occurred to me last night that the two senior hens' relatively belated broodiness (normally I am dealing with it from April, but not this year) may have less to do with the weather and/or their weather forecasting abilities, and more to do with a virile young cock who looks very different from the last dom (who in turn looked very like his dad bar the yellow shanks) taking over as the dominant rooster since 6 weeks ago. Any thoughts or experience on that from anyone reading this thread?

I presume all hens who have a tendency to go broody will do so wether there is a nice , lovely, strange, awkward , young, old rooster or no rooster at all.

My hens get broody without a rooster.

 

[TropicalChickies]

I presume all hens who have a tendency to go broody will do so wether there is a nice , lovely, strange, awkward , young, old rooster or no rooster at all.

My hens get broody without a rooster.

True here as well. I didn't have a rooster for over three years and three hens consistently went broody. Glad they finally all got to be mamas at last.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Had not posted in quite some time, much water under the bridge.
Have a nice garden going also.

 

[ManueB]

I don't know if weather is really such an important factor in broodiness hormones.

It is in wild birds, so I think it must play some role with chickens that live in more natural environments.

Well...Those of us who follow by bob's thread were all rather anxious in December for @RebeccaBoyd 's momma hen, when she decided to hatch chicks in the middle of a very steep hill side, mostly unaccessible to humans, right above a creek.
Momma hen also known as the old bat is a game hen rescued after being abandoned (I think?) and living in the wild, that has stayed quite feral and has one obsession, hatching chicks.
This had a happy ending, in the short term at least. She survived snow, Kentucky relatively mild winter climate, a cold wind storm, predators, scoffed every day at Rebecca who could actually see her through her window, and hatched four chicks.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...es-stories-of-our-flock.1286630/post-26412810
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...es-stories-of-our-flock.1286630/post-26436900

Not to prove that weather doesn't generally play a role to indice broodiness, but more to say that when there's a will there is a way .

 

[Perris]

wonderful story; thanks for sharing. I'm glad she won out. In evolutionary terms oddball behaviour sometimes proves beneficial.

One of David Attenborough's documentaries showed clearly that some birds can and do time their hatches to coincide with the availability of their principal food source (insects in the cases there covered), which in turn can shift weeks backwards and forwards as a result of the weather in a given year. But these are birds that only set a couple or max three times in a year, and are not laying for months and months of the year like chickens.