Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Looks like Europe has been invaded by raccoons
https://phys-org.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/phys.org/news/2023-09-belgium-struggles-invasive-raccoons.amp?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQGsAEggAID#amp_tf=From %1$s&aoh=16939230715908&csi=0&referrer=https://www.google.com&ampshare=https://phys.org/news/2023-09-belgium-struggles-invasive-raccoons.html

Bad news.

 

[Shadrach]

Orly! Love to see this study if you have a link.


Suppose it's been snowing. Do more white chickens still get predated.
Suppose they live on green grass. Does a partridge chicken show up any less than a white chicken.

 

[Shadrach]

22C is a veritable heatwave up here in Scotland. We have had 24C today and are absolutely sweating. I had to shelter in the shade multiple times today as I adjusted the coop for our growing adolescent chickens.

In tangentially-related news, our black chicken, Beatrix, has been broody for a long while now and we cannot break the brood, so we just gave in and popped some eggs under her this weekend. Might not be the best time for more littles in the lead up to winter, but we have plenty of space and it usually doesn't get too cold for too long where I live.

Maybe it's just coincidence or maybe it's chicken intuition, but if Beatrix had been allowed to sit when she originally became broody, her babies would have been hatching at exactly the start of this current heatwave, and she would have been sitting inside, sheltering from all the constant rain over the last few weeks leading up to it. I swear chickens contain multitudes of wisdom.

You're sweating because your comb isn't straight and large and you haven't been drinking enough frozen water; yup I know it's still water hot or cold and you haven't been carefully bred so your core body temperature is at least five degrees less than a hot climate bird. Ffs, don't you know nothing.

 

[fluffycrow]

You're sweating because your comb isn't straight and large

I felt slightly attacked as a big believer in comb surface and heat tolerance to be honest

 

[Shadrach]

I felt slightly attacked as a big believer in comb surface and heat tolerance to be honest

You shouldn't feel attacked because there is a lot of truth in it. However, as you've written it's comb surface area that mainly dictates the rate at which a bird loses heat to the environment. The finer points of topology are lost to some who write on the subject it seems.

Which one of these two do people think has the greatest surface area exposed?

 

[fluffycrow]

You shouldn't feel attacked because there is a lot of truth in it. However, as you've written it's comb surface area that mainly dictates the rate at which a bird loses heat to the environment. The finer points of topology are lost to some who write on the subject it seems.

Which one of these two do people think has the greatest surface area exposed?
View attachment 3628914
View attachment 3628915

Definitely the rose comb. The big rose combs are really effective at dealing with the heat, even better than some scrawny little straight combs

 

[no fly zone]

Hope the raccoons in europe get completely wiped out.

 

[fluffycrow]

Hope the raccoons in europe get completely wiped out.

I hope so too

 

[Shadrach]

30C again today. Fortunately the breeze from the NEish got stronger as the day wore on. Split shift again. They came out both morning and evening and got in the shade in the allotment run where I had placed my chair. When I closed them into the coop run so I could go to lunch they went under the shade box.

An interesting afternoon.
This normal Fret out with the chicks.

Then this is Fret puffed up a bit, but not like a full broody monster pose. She's seen something, I don't know what and she stayed like this for a maybe 15 seconds.

She hadn't at that point and didn't send the chicks to cover. They carried on regardless.
Later.

This young chap and I are going to have to have a very difficult converstaion on the topic of ownership. Frankly I can't see me getting the point accross due to it being such a ridiculous concept.

Yup, it's tree hugging.

Fret has noticed. Instead of leading them straight into the coop she got on the extension roost bar. The chicks joined her. I'm following her logic. One knows it should be up a tree and both know about roost bars.

Good move and logic follow through by Fret. She got on a roost bar in the coop and called the chicks.

The big uncertainty set in. I could just hear Fret thinking why don't they treat this roost bar the same as the tree and the extension roost bar. The chicks eventually settled in their adopted corner and Fret got down and joined them.
Surely it cant be long before the roost on the bar in the coop......

 

[BDutch]

My tiny Dutch just know 29C in the shade is great for sunbathing. I wonder what the real temp was over there.