Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

Four hours today. Mainly grey skies but dry and around 17C.

 

[lightm]

I'm so sorry for your losses @Perris and BDutch. It really seems to have been a trying week for many of us here. And hope @Shadrach starts feeling better soon too. The allotment pictures are so lovely to see every day.

My black frizzle mama hen Dusty went missing three days ago. I suspected she was hiding from the literal cockerels-jumping-on-anything-moving orgy that ensued here several days ago. That situation has been rectified, but poor Dusty did suffer a tear under one wing. After almost three hours of searching, I found her crouching under a tree in the forest. She came to me willingly (I had some pieces of beef to lure her with) and let me carry her to safety where I could examine and treat her. The wound is clean and beginning to close, will need time to heal. She's eating and drinking and laid an egg yesterday. She's in a large hospital pen outside under a roof where she can be with the group but safe behind the wire. Her two five week old chicks are perched on top. They are very independent and doing fine. For now, Dusty seems grateful for the peace and chance to rest.

It's been a week of big changes for my chickens and the effects are still unfolding. Now I completely understand why @TheFatBlueCat gives away cockerels at 4 months. Fortunately, this time, I was able to re-home (with a good deal of effort) two out of the three 5 mo olds I had and they didn't end up as sopita de gallo. But next time, now I see why I could have done this sooner.

I'm new to this cockerel business and because the universe likes to play jokes on me, somehow out of the last six chicks who hatched here, 5 out of 6 were male. That's like a 6% probability, but never mind. One of them, Lucio's hatchmate Paco, died. So I had 10 month old Lucio and 5 month olds Tobias, Segundo, and Solo.

Honestly, I was expecting some chaos to erupt, but didn't know what that would look like and I guess I had to see it for myself. First, all the cockerels started to crow, and I was like, this isn't so bad... They didn't fight. Solo was obviously the strongest and most fearless and the other two made way for him. And Lucio dominated them all of course. But I only have five hens of laying age and one 5 mo old pullet, and I couldn't see keeping a ratio of 5 hens and 4 raging hormonal cockerels. So I had a plan, but the situation was remarkably peaceful for a time -- until it went ka-boom.

Then the cockerels started wanting to mate, chasing the hens and so forth. But they were pretty subdued about it. And I was like, well this isn't so bad...

What I wasn't counting on was that all of the hens were either emerging from a broody phase or mothering chicks. I had 3 broodies -- which I managed to break by closing off their nest -- and two mamas. No eggs for almost a month. So none of the hens were flashing that bright red color that shows they are coming back into lay.

Well, in one day, four of the hens started doing just that. And the cockerels went absolutely beserk. It was like utter pandemonium. A bench clearing brawl at a hockey match. The Jerry Springer show. The hens crouched willingly for the first few hours, then they were running for the hills. There was a even a 4-on-one pile up on poor Patucha (who somehow is not injured or defeathered at all) and after one day of that madness I said, well, the fun is over. I'm really glad I was planning for it.

View attachment 3649472
The Hooligans on their last day together.

That night I moved Segundo and Solo about a kilometer up the road to our gringo neighbors where my partner Juan had converted the bottom section of their water tank tower into a very handy coop. The next morning my employee Maribel arrived with two very cute 9 mo old pullets for Segundo to start his tribe and took Solo to her grandmother's keep to breed him. He won't live forever there, but it's a good place (where Ive gotten all my healthy chickens before being able to hatch chicks here) with plenty of free ranging outdoor life and plenty of hens (opportunity to further his genes).

View attachment 3649465
When I was lamenting to my employee Maribel about having to split up the cockerels, she took a look at Solo here and said her grandmother would take him. I thought she meant for soup, but she said no, he was a good "raza para criar" -- a good "race" for breeding. So I asked her, oh, what breed is he? Knowing they are all mutts. And she said "bien enorme!" Which means "really good enormous!"

We can still hear Segundo crowing now and I visit him and his ladies. Everyone is ok, the hens are laying again, and Tina is weaning her two chicks.

View attachment 3649468
Tina's chicks.

But sadly, Dusty was injured in one of those mating melees and will need some time to heal -- and a good saddle that stays on after that. And Tobias, the cockerel I kept because he seems so calm and thoughtful, has been tidbiting his little heart out trying to win ladies, with some success. Lucio is surprisingly tolerant and clearly relieved that the competition had been reduced to one short legged little guy.

But then two nights ago, Toby left his coop and went to roost in the senior coop with Lucio and the senior hens. Prima, the pullet, stayed in the juniors coop with Dusty and her chicks. I was surprised that Toby would go to be the low man in the senior tribe, but I suspect the number of hens over there he can try to chase down in the morning is a factor. He also seems a bit traumatized by the changes and definitely afraid of me. I really dont want them to feel unstable, but that situation was bound to get out of hand, and I guess it will take some time for everything to settle back into some sort of routine. Anyway, sorry for the long post, and there's more to the story, but it's been quite another lesson in just how fast things happen in chicken time...

And yowza, I'm exhausted.

View attachment 3649471
Toby. "Should I stay or should I go now?"

Long post, but very enjoyable! You are doing great.

 

[fuzzi]

Four hours today. Mainly grey skies but dry and around 17C.View attachment 3649943View attachment 3649947View attachment 3649948

They're getting so big...

 

[MrsNorthie]

I really dont want them to feel unstable, but that situation was bound to get out of hand, and I guess it will take some time for everything to settle back into some sort of routine.

I feel your pain. Out of my 26 pullets, that I got to balance things out for my 3 cockerels.. 1 is definitely a cockerel and I suspect another. :-( This has delayed our full integration and I feel like 4-5 cockerels with 33 pullets is still going to be out of balance and result in more battles.

The New Obvious cockerel is a confident young lad at 18 weeks old. So far, he is calm, but I fear that we are just weeks away from chaos. Goldie seems to be wooing some of the girls away from Blue and poor Spud is still Georgie-Porgy, he gets anywhere near the girls and they squeal and run away. I am considering options on how best to deal with it. :-(

 

[TheFatBlueCat]

I've been absent from BYC for a few weeks, did a brief catch up but apologies if I've missed something important!
Fret's chicks are huge! They grow so fast. Sorry to hear about the covid @Shadrach - I got it earlier this year (again), well I assume so it sure felt like it and was the same good half a day bad for 2 days good a day etc etc. Glad you're not on deaths doorstep though!

My first hatch of the season was a fail, no eggs hatched. Pretty confused about that one honestly, all the eggs I was able to candle looked just fine. The second hatch however has given me 4 chicks. Old Mr head rooster Kowalski was the father for the failed first hatch. One of the cockerels was the father for the second hatch (they carry blue and all the chicks are blue so I can determine). We are down to one cockerel, who still has no name. He's shaping up to be a lovely young rooster. There's plenty of crowing and wing flapping, but generally things are calm. Head rooster actually seems less stressed now he has help with the leg work.

Mama hen Josephine is doing great for her first time. Had a small incident where one of the chicks got trapped under a dish. Luckily I found him in time, he was very cold and probably would have died within 20 minutes more. Mama hen wasn't interested in his plight, I guess by that stage she figured he was a gonner. Took him inside, warmed him up with a hair dryer and he was back no worse for wear half an hour later. I use terracotta dishes for the very reason that they can't be shifted easily, mama hen must have gone to town with scratching to flick it onto a chick. First time that's happened and I've always used them. Currently rethinking their safety but really don't know what else to use as chicks can get stuck under really light things (once one got stuck under a cabbage leaf), and light dishes are much easier to get stuck under in the first place!

My condolences for the losses in people's flocks. It always sucks to lose a flock member.

 

[TropicalChickies]

I feel like 4-5 cockerels with 33 pullets is still going to be out of balance and result in more battles

I'm really under-qualified to advise on this matter -- this is my first experience with multiple cockerels. 33 pullets is a whole lot more than my 5 hens & 1 pullet to 4 cockerels situation. I know there's a few keepers here who keep multiple roosters -- I think @Perris has 3 or 4 roosters and only 16 or so hens, but he has multiple coops. @Molpet keeps multiple roosters across 4 coops and all in one big poultry yard. @GregnLety has several roosters with separate housing arrangements and I think rotates their ranging time somehow. And @Shadrach relates that in the specific scenario of his Catalonia keeping circumstances the average tribe size was 4-8 hens with 1-2 roosters.

From all the reading and mental note taking I've done about this, the only conclusion seems to be that there is no conclusion. Everything depends on the keeping arrangements. And it appears that keeping roosters/cockerels in a more multigenerational situation (with senior and junior roosters respecting a hierarchy) is easier than keeping several the same age.

I still plan on keeping Lucio (10 months old) and Tobias (5 months old ) as his junior. We'll see but Tobias seems a natural "second lieutenant type. He knows he isn't a a fighter like Lucio and his short legs keep him from catching hens by force. So he uses treats. And sometimes a hen crouches for him.

Hopefully out of the 4 chicks here now, there's at least 1-2 pullets...

I just couldn't see any way that 4 mating cockerels and 6 females could work without more hens getting injured and hiding in the forest. And I'm not going to bring in a bunch of unknown females and go through quarantining and introductions just try to appease animals that likely won't do what I would hope for anyway. I want to keep allowing my tribe(s) to expand organically via broodies hatching chicks here.

If you don't my asking, I'm just curious, what is your keeping circumstance like?

 

[Little Tala Bug]

I'm so sorry for your losses @Perris and BDutch. It really seems to have been a trying week for many of us here. And hope @Shadrach starts feeling better soon too. The allotment pictures are so lovely to see every day.

My black frizzle mama hen Dusty went missing three days ago. I suspected she was hiding from the literal cockerels-jumping-on-anything-moving orgy that ensued here several days ago. That situation has been rectified, but poor Dusty did suffer a tear under one wing. After almost three hours of searching, I found her crouching under a tree in the forest. She came to me willingly (I had some pieces of beef to lure her with) and let me carry her to safety where I could examine and treat her. The wound is clean and beginning to close, will need time to heal. She's eating and drinking and laid an egg yesterday. She's in a large hospital pen outside under a roof where she can be with the group but safe behind the wire. Her two five week old chicks are perched on top. They are very independent and doing fine. For now, Dusty seems grateful for the peace and chance to rest.

It's been a week of big changes for my chickens and the effects are still unfolding. Now I completely understand why @TheFatBlueCat gives away cockerels at 4 months. Fortunately, this time, I was able to re-home (with a good deal of effort) two out of the three 5 mo olds I had and they didn't end up as sopita de gallo. But next time, now I see why I could have done this sooner.

I'm new to this cockerel business and because the universe likes to play jokes on me, somehow out of the last six chicks who hatched here, 5 out of 6 were male. That's like a 6% probability, but never mind. One of them, Lucio's hatchmate Paco, died. So I had 10 month old Lucio and 5 month olds Tobias, Segundo, and Solo.

Honestly, I was expecting some chaos to erupt, but didn't know what that would look like and I guess I had to see it for myself. First, all the cockerels started to crow, and I was like, this isn't so bad... They didn't fight. Solo was obviously the strongest and most fearless and the other two made way for him. And Lucio dominated them all of course. But I only have five hens of laying age and one 5 mo old pullet, and I couldn't see keeping a ratio of 5 hens and 4 raging hormonal cockerels. So I had a plan, but the situation was remarkably peaceful for a time -- until it went ka-boom.

Then the cockerels started wanting to mate, chasing the hens and so forth. But they were pretty subdued about it. And I was like, well this isn't so bad...

What I wasn't counting on was that all of the hens were either emerging from a broody phase or mothering chicks. I had 3 broodies -- which I managed to break by closing off their nest -- and two mamas. No eggs for almost a month. So none of the hens were flashing that bright red color that shows they are coming back into lay.

Well, in one day, four of the hens started doing just that. And the cockerels went absolutely beserk. It was like utter pandemonium. A bench clearing brawl at a hockey match. The Jerry Springer show. The hens crouched willingly for the first few hours, then they were running for the hills. There was a even a 4-on-one pile up on poor Patucha (who somehow is not injured or defeathered at all) and after one day of that madness I said, well, the fun is over. I'm really glad I was planning for it.

View attachment 3649472
The Hooligans on their last day together.

That night I moved Segundo and Solo about a kilometer up the road to our gringo neighbors where my partner Juan had converted the bottom section of their water tank tower into a very handy coop. The next morning my employee Maribel arrived with two very cute 9 mo old pullets for Segundo to start his tribe and took Solo to her grandmother's keep to breed him. He won't live forever there, but it's a good place (where Ive gotten all my healthy chickens before being able to hatch chicks here) with plenty of free ranging outdoor life and plenty of hens (opportunity to further his genes).

View attachment 3649465
When I was lamenting to my employee Maribel about having to split up the cockerels, she took a look at Solo here and said her grandmother would take him. I thought she meant for soup, but she said no, he was a good "raza para criar" -- a good "race" for breeding. So I asked her, oh, what breed is he? Knowing they are all mutts. And she said "bien enorme!" Which means "really good enormous!"

We can still hear Segundo crowing now and I visit him and his ladies. Everyone is ok, the hens are laying again, and Tina is weaning her two chicks.

View attachment 3649468
Tina's chicks.

But sadly, Dusty was injured in one of those mating melees and will need some time to heal -- and a good saddle that stays on after that. And Tobias, the cockerel I kept because he seems so calm and thoughtful, has been tidbiting his little heart out trying to win ladies, with some success. Lucio is surprisingly tolerant and clearly relieved that the competition had been reduced to one short legged little guy.

But then two nights ago, Toby left his coop and went to roost in the senior coop with Lucio and the senior hens. Prima, the pullet, stayed in the juniors coop with Dusty and her chicks. I was surprised that Toby would go to be the low man in the senior tribe, but I suspect the number of hens over there he can try to chase down in the morning is a factor. He also seems a bit traumatized by the changes and definitely afraid of me. I really dont want them to feel unstable, but that situation was bound to get out of hand, and I guess it will take some time for everything to settle back into some sort of routine. Anyway, sorry for the long post, and there's more to the story, but it's been quite another lesson in just how fast things happen in chicken time...

And yowza, I'm exhausted.

View attachment 3649471
Toby. "Should I stay or should I go now?"

This post came at the perfect time for me... thank you! My four spare pricks turned four months old yesterday and we are trying to decide what to do with them, who to potentially keep and who to process. No one has crowed yet, probably because of our very intimidating dominant rooster, Johnny Cashew.

I also noticed that our elder rooster, William, has been keeping far away from the flock in the last few days and hasn't been crowing at all or tidbitting to any ladies. I inspected him for lice, mites, sour crop... all the usual suspects, but he seems to be in good shape besides moulting all his sickle feathers out; he has bright eyes and is perky and responsive when I approach him. I wonder if he is keeping his distance and not crowing or tuktukking because he senses the impending shitstorm from the young lads.

 

[TropicalChickies]

This post came at the perfect time for me... thank you! My four spare pricks turned four months old yesterday and we are trying to decide what to do with them, who to potentially keep and who to process. No one has crowed yet, probably because of our very intimidating dominant rooster, Johnny Cashew.

I also noticed that our elder rooster, William, has been keeping far away from the flock in the last few days and hasn't been crowing at all or tidbitting to any ladies. I inspected him for lice, mites, sour crop... all the usual suspects, but he seems to be in good shape besides moulting all his sickle feathers out; he has bright eyes and is perky and responsive when I approach him. I wonder if he is keeping his distance and not crowing or tuktukking because he senses the impending shitstorm from the young lads.

Glad it was timely. I'm still a little shellshocked at how the situation erupted here in literally one day. The hens flashed a little red and --BAM! -- all hell broke loose. At one point I felt like I was back in the mosh pit at a Rage Against the Machine show. Like I said, I'm glad I had a plan.

I hope William is ok and just being cautious. I have a soft spot in my heart for him.

 

[Perris]

it appears that keeping roosters/cockerels in a more multigenerational situation (with senior and junior roosters respecting a hierarchy) is easier than keeping several the same age.

yes, that is my experience.

3 roos currently, 2 of them functional, down from 4/3 as recently as last week. There is fighting only when we get a change of dom, and the rest of the time the boys get along and work together, with an occasional quick chase just to show everyone who's boss and who's not.

Where it gets hard is with the superannuated roo who cannot outrun his replacement; the first one, Sven, continued to live in relative peace and harmony on the flock fringe for years. Chirk, however, still prefers safe confinement and is not yet back to full health from whatever it was that struck him down. For the first time here now the 2 functional roos are the same age, even the same clutch. But I can't see Fforest challenging Killay unless the latter meets with some misfortune.

Talking of which, life throws a spanner in any plans or expectations I have had for the flock, so I've learned to be cautious about culling. If I'd got rid of Fforest before June, when I had 4 males and he was nearly a year old, I would now have just 1 functional roo. The flock can go from too many to too few very quickly.

 

[Molpet]

I'm really under-qualified to advise on this matter -- this is my first experience with multiple cockerels. 33 pullets is a whole lot more than my 5 hens & 1 pullet to 4 cockerels situation. I know there's a few keepers here who keep multiple roosters -- I think @Perris has 3 or 4 roosters and only 16 or so hens, but he has multiple coops. @Molpet keeps multiple roosters across 4 coops and all in one big poultry yard. @GregnLety has several roosters with separate housing arrangements and I think rotates their ranging time somehow. And @Shadrach relates that in the specific scenario of his Catalonia keeping circumstances the average tribe size was 4-8 hens with 1-2 roosters.

From all the reading and mental note taking I've done about this, the only conclusion seems to be that there is no conclusion. Everything depends on the keeping arrangements. And it appears that keeping roosters/cockerels in a more multigenerational situation (with senior and junior roosters respecting a hierarchy) is easier than keeping several the same age.

I still plan on keeping Lucio (10 months old) and Tobias (5 months old ) as his junior. We'll see but Tobias seems a natural "second lieutenant type. He knows he isn't a a fighter like Lucio and his short legs keep him from catching hens by force. So he uses treats. And sometimes a hen crouches for him.

Hopefully out of the 4 chicks here now, there's at least 1-2 pullets...

I just couldn't see any way that 4 mating cockerels and 6 females could work without more hens getting injured and hiding in the forest. And I'm not going to bring in a bunch of unknown females and go through quarantining and introductions just try to appease animals that likely won't do what I would hope for anyway. I want to keep allowing my tribe(s) to expand organically via broodies hatching chicks here.

If you don't my asking, I'm just curious, what is your keeping circumstance like?

Yes multi generation roosters seems to work better. But it depends on the roosters also. I have one coop that is stuffed because birds keep moving in. 3 dominate roosters ago, was very tolerant and the rest have been also. There is a fringe rooster that was a co dominate 2 yrs ago. The dominant died and a younger took over, but tolerates him. A 18 month moved over last fall and he's the co dominate. He's not as tolerant but the old man sneaks in before lockup