Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[fluffycrow]

mine didn't have food near the nest; but one may have hatched earlier than the others. It will be interesting to see how long it takes the other 3 to catch up in the feathering game.

Then I will still guess its 60% gene related, and 40% it sleeping on her side. Right now I'd say Cruella babies are 3 days behind on feather growth, so I'd assume yours are about 3-2 days

 

[GregnLety]

I think a lot of keepers who use a multi coop system find rooster conflicts easier to deal with when their coops are a good distnace apart.

In our case we built them under the best shade and my wife kept bringing more chickens so they ended up being close.

 

[TropicalChickies]

View attachment 3609046

Mine are still segregating themselves

All of this discussion of how chickens sort themselves out into groups or tribes is fascinating. Considering I look after 11 chickens who are all farmyard mixes and no two look alike (with one possible exception of rooster Lucio and the cockerel Solo), it looks like I'll be the one mixing and matching. That's not really my personal management style, but I do enjoy watching their social interactions and remembering who hangs out with whom, who is more dominating, who is more easygoing etc.

I put Dusty in the juveniles coop to brood because she's 1. Younger than Tina -- closer in age to the juveniles and 2. Personality wise, she's a "free agent" -- she doesn't seem to give a hang what Lucio or the two seniors think of her or have any ambition about rising in the ranks of his harem. Before she went broody, she spent most of her time foraging on her own, sometimes mixing with Lucio's harem, sometimes with the youngsters.

Frida is another in-betweener who I could see going either way, although Lucio has been much more attentive to her lately. She's getting big and has strong legs-- it's very easy for Lucio to mate with her, no fuss, no muss. He answers her escort calls now and tidbits as much for her as the others.

We'll see how much displeasure Queen Tina shows about that whenever she stops brooding/mothering and starts wanting eggs fertilized again...

Well, with diverse looking group of mutts, I suppose I have to work with what I've got. Perhaps at some point I'll notice more subtle patterns emerge since their most obvious looks are so different.

Tax: Finally a good shot of Frida, who only sits still when she's waiting for her egg to drop. I felt kinda bad about bothering her, but couldn't resist just getting one good picture of her. She laid a perfect egg soon after.

Frida. "Hey Food Lady, can't you see I'm busy here?"

 

[BDutch]

Janeka's chicks are 1 week old today and one of them is way ahead of the others in feather development - I've not seen one grow them so fast before
View attachment 3609096

Great line up!
Are you teaching them the river dance?

 

[Shadrach]

Two and a half hours again today. Rain overnight and this morning but it was dry and sunny while I was at the allotments.
Something has changed in Frets behaviour. Normally she rushes about not quite sure what she should do first/next. She was much calmer today.

I tease Carbon a bit I must admit. I reach down and hold her tail gently. She used to pull away and move out of easy reach. She rarely even bothers to look up these days.

Fret and Carbon.

Henry.

That's my compost cooking arrangement on the right of the picture.

 

[fuzzi]

Incredible really isn't it. That's a lovely us and them picture.

Thank you!

Serendipity.

 

[fuzzi]

All of this discussion of how chickens sort themselves out into groups or tribes is fascinating. Considering I look after 11 chickens who are all farmyard mixes and no two look alike (with one possible exception of rooster Lucio and the cockerel Solo), it looks like I'll be the one mixing and matching. That's not really my personal management style, but I do enjoy watching their social interactions and remembering who hangs out with whom, who is more dominating, who is more easygoing etc.

I put Dusty in the juveniles coop to brood because she's 1. Younger than Tina -- closer in age to the juveniles and 2. Personality wise, she's a "free agent" -- she doesn't seem to give a hang what Lucio or the two seniors think of her or have any ambition about rising in the ranks of his harem. Before she went broody, she spent most of her time foraging on her own, sometimes mixing with Lucio's harem, sometimes with the youngsters.

Frida is another in-betweener who I could see going either way, although Lucio has been much more attentive to her lately. She's getting big and has strong legs-- it's very easy for Lucio to mate with her, no fuss, no muss. He answers her escort calls now and tidbits as much for her as the others.

We'll see how much displeasure Queen Tina shows about that whenever she stops brooding/mothering and starts wanting eggs fertilized again...

Well, with diverse looking group of mutts, I suppose I have to work with what I've got. Perhaps at some point I'll notice more subtle patterns emerge since their most obvious looks are so different.

Tax: Finally a good shot of Frida, who only sits still when she's waiting for her egg to drop. I felt kinda bad about bothering her, but couldn't resist just getting one good picture of her. She laid a perfect egg soon after.

View attachment 3609305
Frida. "Hey Food Lady, can't you see I'm busy here?"

What a puss!

You should post that in the picture of the week thread.

 

[MrsNorthie]

Tax for lurking again. It's hard to keep up with threads sometimes. I lost two of my girls in one week last month, leaving my 7yo RIR ,Nevada all alone. So I took in 3 four yo hens needing a new home. Willa, a barred rock, Celeste, a blue marans I think, and Elvira, a BCM. Introduction is going slowly, poor Nevada has been demoted to bottom hen, but I am hoping they will chill out soon. I am looking forward to seeing Fret's eggs hatch as hope all goes well with them and the other allotment residents.

Sorry to hear of your loss, and I hope the integration goes well.

 

[townchicks]

Willa is now in Bossypants jail. Last night I pulled her out of the group, she spent the night in a crate in the house. After bedtime I put Nevada in the coop as they slept. All was peaceful this morning and Nevada is so much more relaxed and less clingy. The other two are still making token pecks around the food but really they are hanging out together in peace. I'll keep her out a couple of days, and fingers crossed she be more chill when she gets back in.

 

[Little Tala Bug]

Re. tribes and the wonderful portability of housing:

I have been attempting the tribes thing for a while, and, as such, I got a couple of auxiliary coops, one of which I had placed over an acre away, and let all the chickens roam around wherever they want on our 10 acre property. None seem to want to leave the acre that is my backyard The deposed rooster, William, sits on the driveway or barges into the house, and one of our ex-battery hens, Hazel, was venturing along the farm track up to the other coop just to lay an egg every day, and then coming back into the yard to hang out.

We are dealing with a lice infestation now, and our 11 youngsters are too big for their teenage accommodation, so we are trying a new coop formation yet again as we cycle through treatments for the various coops and dust our chickens. At the moment, we have them as far apart as possible in the yard, with the new coop on the edge of one side for the head roo, Johnny, and his harem of mature hens; the new youngster accommodation in the middle of the yard; and William's coop on the edge of the other side with the new-ish hens. We figure it's neutral to have the youngsters in the middle because both older tribes dislike them equally

Our strategy was to treat the top tribe for lice, take them from their old manky wooden shed "coop" (which is now condemned and closed off to chickens), and pop them into the new coop, over which we have placed a 3x4m run to confine them for a couple days while we treat the rest of the flock to minimise cross contamination. Once the pest situation is under control, we will take away the portable run and have the three coops available in the yard for whomever fancies them, and see how it all shakes out as the youngsters grow up. That will leave a couple of guest coops, a broody coop, and the portable run empty to use as hospital or isolation areas. It is so helpful to have portable coops and a relatively portable run!

I noticed our roos didn't start to fight until our hen numbers took a big hit over winter (12 down to 8). It looks like we have 6-7 pullets in our group of youngsters, plus the 5 new pullets we got just before they hatched, and the momma hen who reappeared after her secret nest situation, plus 2 new pullets coming in September that I pre-ordered before we were graced with surprise babies! Added to the OG hens, that will be over 20 girls to our two boys. Hopefully that will be more than enough hens to keep William and Johnny from fighting. Jury is out on whether we will keep a baby boy from the new batch or not. We will probably try but ultimately the decision is down to William and Johnny, neither of whom we really want to get rid of.

Once I'm done building the youngster accommodation and have finished the bulk of the decontamination of the flock, I'll post pictures of the setup as tax.