Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Molpet]

I've been depressed since Skeksis died. This past week has been especially tough for some unknown reason. I miss being able to just go outside and spending time with chickens. It was basically my therapy.

Time change and less daylight doesn't help either.
I start extra fish oil, vit d and B's at time change

 

[L-plate chicken mum]

At least you have chicken friends who understand

 

[BDutch]

I've been depressed since Skeksis died. This past week has been especially tough for some unknown reason. I miss being able to just go outside and spending time with chickens. It was basically my therapy.

This is really tough. Hope you enjoy our company from a distance.

Ive been thinking how to help. A few ideas: isnst there somewhere not too far away a children’s farm where they keep poultry? Or where you can keep a few chickens? Or, rent a plot of land where you can start a veggie garden with a few chickens like Shad? Or maybe there is a hobby farmer where you can help a few days a week who has room for a few naked neck frizzles?

 

[Shadrach]

You too! How are you?
Love your chickens breakfast!!

I thinks that's Perris's portion.
Can you believe I've cooked that stuff for my own meals!
I don't know what's come over me. I don't eat birdseed.
I did some beans the other day. It took about 26 hours to make a rather unappetizing looking broth. One hour cooking, then twenty four hours after cooking fermenting with frequent water changes. Cold beans on cous cous.

I'm going to get some help, either that or a recipe book.

 

[Shadrach]

I was like that for the first two months of switching to homemade feed. I was constantly buying and trying new ingredients, staring at the chickens while they were eating to see what they went for, scrutinizing what was left on the ground (very little if anything) and compiling notes on the nutritional content of every ingredient.

After a while, I was like, ok, enough. The chickens were eating and active, looked healthy, hens were laying, so I started to relax about it. Now I've got a "basic recipe" that I sometimes add to depending on seasonal availability or what I've harvested that week from the farm.

Btw, if there's a neighborhood in your area where people from India or Pakistan have settled, there will likely be shops where you can get lots of good legumes for various dals that are easy to soak like red lentils and mung beans. And ground versions (flours) of them as well. Prices in these shops are usually lower than bougie health food shops.

Spoilt for choice here. Got everything from East African to Polish shops.

 

[Shadrach]

Four hours today. Chilly but dry with some sunshine.

Carbon is looking better but that may in part for the first time she has a full set of feathers around her belly, under her wings and around her arse. She's on day three of worming.

Fortunately she likes bread, possibly because they got fed a lot of bread before I arrived, so getting Flubendazole powder into her isn't a problem. A make a paste with a bit of water and soak the bread in it.
Today she ate around 50 grams of grower pellets, a square inch of mackerel, fermented grains and seeds and whatever she foraged in the time they were out on the allotments.
Carbon eating.

It looks like Mow has claimed her spot next to the door. Dig was there when I last looked and I heard them arguing about who went where while I was cleaning up spilt feed.

 

[becstalls]

herewith the ISBN, which any library (or bookseller worth their salt) should be able to track down for you.

ISBN	1780642490, 9781780642499

Do you have red mite or lice? Or another tyoe of mite?

Maybe you have a strain of red mite that is immune for permetrine. This happens a lot in my country. And people need another method to eliminate them. For farmers who sell eggs the permethrin and other poisons are forbidden (because of residues in feed).
If it freezes the red mites are not active anymore but eggs can hatch in spring again. Diatomaceous earth is part of the method I used. Maybe sulphur powder does about the same but I have no experience with that.

I had red mite last summer and had a few weeks with extra work. After a very thorough clean with detergent & adding special herbs in water and feed, & adding sand with some diatomaceous earth in the sand bath, painting the inside of the coop and the roosts with DE mixed with water. The joints and cracks were painted twice. The adult chickens who came in the nestbox got a bit on their back under the feathers too. I used rolls white ribbed paper/ cardboard to check daily. The mites were reduced a lot doing so.

One area got a few new mites almost every day (in the paper rolls) , I cleaned that area a second time after a week and found some eggs behind a piece of wood. Painted this area again with DE mixed with water. If you have lice in the ribbed paper rolls you need to heat them to kill the mites. About 15 seconds in the microwave is enough.

I believe it’s northern fowl mite. It doesn’t look like lice to me, and they aren’t red. I think I might use Sevin spray to get the vertical surfaces in the coop, and I’ve mixed sand into their dust bathing areas just to try to break up the clay a bit more for them. I’m seeing an improvement, just have to keep at it until I’ve made it through all the eggs, I suppose.

 

[becstalls]

have you tried liquid paraffin, the sort that's edible? Some old handbooks recommend a drop of that in the usual spots (below vent, under wings, back of neck).

I have never heard of using paraffin. I wonder how that works.

 

[no fly zone]

This is really tough. Hope you enjoy our company from a distance.

Ive been thinking how to help. A few ideas: isnst there somewhere not too far away a children’s farm where they keep poultry? Or where you can keep a few chickens? Or, rent a plot of land where you can start a veggie garden with a few chickens like Shad? Or maybe there is a hobby farmer where you can help a few days a week who has room for a few naked neck frizzles?

There is one of those tourist type farms not too far away. Maybe 45 min drive. They have like a little petting zoo set up that includes chickens. The allotment thing does not exist here in the US as far as I know.

 

[no fly zone]

Here's breakfast for my lot Ladies-Eight, before top dressing (with mealworms this morning)
View attachment 3680237
what you're looking at is (in random order): whole wheat berries, whole maize (red, yellow and white), whole black sunflowers, peas (green and white), mung beans, pigeon peas (split), safflowers, dari (red and white), naked oats, rice, and there should be some tares, hemp seed, black rape and maple peas in there somewhere too.

I don't normally have so many varieties on the go at once; this is a combination of 3 sacks of different mixes because 1 pea combo sack was coming to the bottom and I wanted to get the sack out (Shad's kitchen organization issue biting) so I amalgamated it with the other, and I always put to ferment together some from the pea mix sack with some from the mostly wheat sack.

I saw a post on FB earlier today where some guy's rooster died from choking on a pea. Very tragic.