Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[MrsNorthie]

The industry wants fast growth, but fast growth may not be optimal for the chicken.

I think for most of us, we just want happy healthy chickens with the maximum life expectancy.

 

[Shadrach]

Three very cold hours today. Part of the reason there are only two pictures is because I didn't want to take my hands out of my pockets.
It's going to be around freezing for the next couple of days.
Everybody went out onto the allotments.
I took three lots of food, dried as I buy it, fermented and fermented and dried. I also offered growers pellets.
Dig unable to get to the food tried a pellet and spat it back out. All three feed offerings got eaten in no discernable order. They all tried the options. They all like the bird seed base I've been using while I experiment with the feed.
For those in the UK this is what I buy.

https://www.reallywildbirdfood.co.uk/seed-mixes/the-original-farm-mix-/tofm10

This is what's in it.
"Ingredients include black sunflower seeds, millet, plain canary seed, oilseed rape, naked oats, wheat, cut maize, peanut granules and safflower."

 

[MrsNorthie]

Here are a few pics from a not as chilly day.

Fluffy Butts-on-the water.

Blue - Comb is healing up after some minor skirmishes.

Spud is inspecting the one of the new feeders.

Fermented feed breaks down the galvanized feeders so we got some untreated lumber and built a couple of trough style feeders, treated with food grade oil, this will do the job until we do the new expansion and upgrade project.

 

[BDutch]

The Earth can deal with most poisons given some time. The problems you metion are still a stocking density problem apart from perhaps gmo but the reason we have invested in gmo products is a stocking density problem because there are more mouths to feed than none intensive production methods can manage and make a profit.

Most pollutions solves in time but not all. Adding poisons all the time from agriculture, oil products, industry and medicines make it worse every decade. More mouths also means we need other ways to produce food and other eating habits. Less meat, more split peas, beans , seeds, nuts . A bit more like the ingredients for organic chickens.

Other possibilities: more birth control, floodings, draughts, hurricanes and wars to stop expanding the number of people on this planet.

It rather depends on which profile one aims for, there are lots to choose from. Like it or not, what little we know about nutrition in general has been researched by large commercial enterprises.

I believe chickens, pigs , humans and many more herbivores do well enough with an unbalanced food regime. As long as there is a fair amount of the needed ingredients in it. Including minerals and vitamins. Maybe more important is that it shouldn’t have too much sugar, fat and salt in it on a regular basis. Im not talking about optimising for commerce.

Just imagine discussions on feed for humans in a hospital or a prison like we do now with feed for chickens.

Dairy produce is a definite no. There is no way a chicken would encounter it in natural keeping conditions.

If natural is important you can add cooked feed to the list ‘ no feed for chickens’. And I don’t think chickens often come across meat like pork and beef, in the wild, and fish is a really rare catch for chickens imho. You can add feed like rice (original habitat), grass seeds, fruits, insects and frogs to the list ‘ natural yummie feed for chickens’

A lot longer than either corn or soy (at least for those parts of the world).

Soy comes from China.

Herbivores like chickens, pigs , humans eat all kind of food from all around the world nowadays. In general this is no problem if the change is not too different or abrupt.

Here are a few pics from a not as chilly day.

Fluffy Butts-on-the water.

Beautiful

 

[tranquiliti]

you think fish maybe?
View attachment 3694604

Or anywhere with a stream that the birds can use for drinking: there may be any number of aquatic species that could be ingested.

E.g. June 2023

.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

it's a stocking density problem

The root of so many of the problems humans cause. There should be moderation in all things, yet we're compelled to find ways to maximize our own stocking density. Like automating production of needs like food so we can spend more time sitting around feeling restless and confused about our purpose. Humans are a muddle.

When the commercial-feed conversation started on this thread, I remember feeling like a black sheep since our chickens love commercial feed, and I'm grateful for the option. I'm not sure I have the experience needed to catch symptoms of malnutrition early enough. Also, despite the number of farms around us, sourcing grains is difficult and expensive. Farms are either tiny & craft or corporate & inaccessible.

That said, I've fermented feed in the past and will likely do so again soon, and this thread has greatly expanded our chickens' palates. It's been timely because our Ashley has been going through something weird, slightly reminiscent of issues experienced by Carbon, maybe a little bit of Fret (specifically her reduced feed intake), and @TropicalChickies' Butchie. She fasts for 2 weeks every 3 months.

It started with laying problems before molt last fall. A few softshell eggs plus a slow crop for a couple weeks. She bounced back, molted, and laid beautiful blue eggs all spring, but in late May, she stopped laying again and went off commercial feed.

Her poops became thin, green strands, urates still white. Hard crop the first few nights, then empty for days. Clean butt, good balance, and she stayed sociable and active. Very active, in fact, because while others napped or dustbathed, Ashley foraged. She was always foraging.

Upon close inspection, I saw she was eating a lot of grit and those tiny things in the dirt the human eye doesn't see. I started putting chick grit out for her, and she ate a ton of it.

If a cricket crossed her path, she'd grab that, too, but in the first days of the fast, she wouldn't take so much as a mealworm from me. My first interventions for her had been medication hidden in treats, so maybe she thought my offerings were too "mediciney."

Around this time, @Perris published the feed article, and I remember thinking, oh no, if Ashley doesn't want a mealworm, her "prospects for recovery are poor" (per the section about feed for invalids). But she'd eat a mealworm if found under a rock, so I did the only sane thing, obviously, and postponed all non-essential work and social commitments to spend hours turning over rocks and logs for Ashley.

The side benefit was that if she didn't survive her fast, she'd at least spend her last days living a good life, and I'd have had the quality time with her.

She did start moving a little more slowly, but still good balance, bright-eyed, and bushy tailed. She got by on the termites we found together and typically one item per day of whatever partially @Perris-inspired smorgasbrød I'd offer: she might scarf down oats one day but ignore the mealworms. The next, she'd ignore the oats and eat only the greek yogurt. The next: only blueberries.

The others greatly enjoyed her daily leftovers, and suddenly their diets were much more diverse, but they still liked to fill their crops full of commercial feed for the night. Ashley did, too, after 2 weeks of incredibly reduced intake.

It happened again in August (and sent her into an early but not hard molt) and just recently, in November. She went back to commercial feed a week ago, to my delight, since termites and crickets have disappeared for winter, so I'd been overtime to find her food this time. Cucumber ended up being the gateway back to eating a normal amount again.

In knew she was about to start eating commercial feed when she ate 3 of these grapes and half the cucumber, along with every last mealworm, awaiting their fate here in a bed of flax and chia seeds.

Here she is back at the feeder for breakfast, not looking or feeling overly skinny after 2 weeks of eating nearly nothing. It's as though her metabolism shuts down, and she maintains.

Lastly, since those of you with the BYC calendar are surely missing his face after turning to December, here's a poultry paparazzi photo of Mr. November relaxing in the dustbath with his squad. That's Miss Eula (2x Miss February) to the right.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good afternoon one and all!

Temperature is in the 70s.

Have a great day!

 

[Shadrach]

The root of so many of the problems humans cause. There should be moderation in all things, yet we're compelled to find ways to maximize our own stocking density. Like automating production of needs like food so we can spend more time sitting around feeling restless and confused about our purpose. Humans are a muddle.

When the commercial-feed conversation started on this thread, I remember feeling like a black sheep since our chickens love commercial feed, and I'm grateful for the option. I'm not sure I have the experience needed to catch symptoms of malnutrition early enough. Also, despite the number of farms around us, sourcing grains is difficult and expensive. Farms are either tiny & craft or corporate & inaccessible.

That said, I've fermented feed in the past and will likely do so again soon, and this thread has greatly expanded our chickens' palates. It's been timely because our Ashley has been going through something weird, slightly reminiscent of issues experienced by Carbon, maybe a little bit of Fret (specifically her reduced feed intake), and @TropicalChickies' Butchie. She fasts for 2 weeks every 3 months.

It started with laying problems before molt last fall. A few softshell eggs plus a slow crop for a couple weeks. She bounced back, molted, and laid beautiful blue eggs all spring, but in late May, she stopped laying again and went off commercial feed.

Her poops became thin, green strands, urates still white. Hard crop the first few nights, then empty for days. Clean butt, good balance, and she stayed sociable and active. Very active, in fact, because while others napped or dustbathed, Ashley foraged. She was always foraging.

Upon close inspection, I saw she was eating a lot of grit and those tiny things in the dirt the human eye doesn't see. I started putting chick grit out for her, and she ate a ton of it.

If a cricket crossed her path, she'd grab that, too, but in the first days of the fast, she wouldn't take so much as a mealworm from me. My first interventions for her had been medication hidden in treats, so maybe she thought my offerings were too "mediciney."

Around this time, @Perris published the feed article, and I remember thinking, oh no, if Ashley doesn't want a mealworm, her "prospects for recovery are poor" (per the section about feed for invalids). But she'd eat a mealworm if found under a rock, so I did the only sane thing, obviously, and postponed all non-essential work and social commitments to spend hours turning over rocks and logs for Ashley.

The side benefit was that if she didn't survive her fast, she'd at least spend her last days living a good life, and I'd have had the quality time with her.

She did start moving a little more slowly, but still good balance, bright-eyed, and bushy tailed. She got by on the termites we found together and typically one item per day of whatever partially @Perris-inspired smorgasbrød I'd offer: she might scarf down oats one day but ignore the mealworms. The next, she'd ignore the oats and eat only the greek yogurt. The next: only blueberries.

The others greatly enjoyed her daily leftovers, and suddenly their diets were much more diverse, but they still liked to fill their crops full of commercial feed for the night. Ashley did, too, after 2 weeks of incredibly reduced intake.

It happened again in August (and sent her into an early but not hard molt) and just recently, in November. She went back to commercial feed a week ago, to my delight, since termites and crickets have disappeared for winter, so I'd been overtime to find her food this time. Cucumber ended up being the gateway back to eating a normal amount again.

In knew she was about to start eating commercial feed when she ate 3 of these grapes and half the cucumber, along with every last mealworm, awaiting their fate here in a bed of flax and chia seeds.

View attachment 3695494

Here she is back at the feeder for breakfast, not looking or feeling overly skinny after 2 weeks of eating nearly nothing. It's as though her metabolism shuts down, and she maintains.

View attachment 3695496

Lastly, since those of you with the BYC calendar are surely missing his face after turning to December, here's a poultry paparazzi photo of Mr. November relaxing in the dustbath with his squad. That's Miss Eula (2x Miss February) to the right.

View attachment 3695495

The whole feed business, commercial and home grown is a bit of a nightmare to make sense of. No doubt there is much that could be improved in commercial feed, particularly the feeds that get sold to backyard keepers. The feed the large progressive commercial concerns use is not the same from what I've read and been told.
in more recent times the human food fads that hit the media and their associated politics have been applied to the chicken. There are countless home brew chicken feed recipies often based on no more than we are told it's good for us so it must be good for them. It would take an awful lot of long term research to see how chickens fed these alternative diets fared over the long term.

Science has worked out the basics of what we need to be reasonably healthy.
For humans we have a good estimate of the quantities of protein, vitamins and minerals we need to sustain life. It wasn't that long ago that simple cures for rickets were researched or the discovery that vitamin C addressed scurvy. We are still learning after all these thousands of years how to feed ourselves properly.

The articles below posted by Perris suggest that given a choice of foodstuffs a chicken can balance it's diet. Interesting word is balance. What one needs to be careful of is not assuming that being able to "balance" a diet means the subject knows what's good for them to eat. There is a world of difference. We don't know; the high mortality rate related to diet is proof of that. I don't know of any other creature that knows.We learn't about what to eat and how to eat pretty much by what we were given as children and the tales of don't eat that, Aunty Dodds ate some and dropped dead.

Now we are better informed, we read labels, some will know what quantities of particular nutrients they should eat for their body weight. Others may go by the eat five types of vegetables a day rule. Dump a pile of mixed unlabled foodstuffs in their natural state in front of many people and they'll be asking what it is and what they should do with it, if anything, before eating it. Not much instinctive knowing going on there. I suggest chickens are much the same.
Some creature like the Panda for example need a very particular diet to survive.
Chickens, like us, are completely omnivorous. They'll try just about anything they come accross.
One of my elder sisters newly introduced Silky pullets when let into the garden head for a bay leaf plant and ate enough to pack her crop solid and ended up at the vets having the leaves pulled out of her cut open crop by the vet. She probably knows she shouldn't eat any more of that unless she really liked the vet.
The chicks I've observed have all been broody raised and I watched mum teaching the chicks what was and what wasn't good to eat. Yup, mum told them to eat the chick crumb supplied because she knows the chicks have to eat and that was what was there at the nest site. Once away from the nest a lot of mums tried to stop the chicks eating the supplied feed and encourage them to eat what she foraged for them. The chicks learn whats good to eat. I've yet to see any sign of a chick knowing what's good to eat and what isn't at birth. It's all learn't and/or based on opportunity. Luckily, because chickens are omniverous the vast majority of what they try out won't kill them and they develop diet preferences.
Most of us eat commercial feed. Not many of us eat natural produce. We've been eating commercial feed for that long that in the event we had to return to foraging (we were never the great predator some seem to wish) most of us would die because we don't know what's good to eat.

Science has taken some of the risks of malnutrition off the worry list for the more affluent and better educated people on the planet. Many of us got fed UPFs as children from breast milk substitutes to tiny canned baby dinners. We lived to tell the tale and overall our survival rate has improved over the centuries; not through any instinctive knowledge but through science investigating diet and us learning about what science has discovered.

We now know that we and chickens require certain nutrients for survival.
Commercially produced feed supplies them much as it does for us.
Recently science has discovered that the provenance and production processes and certain additives in food are probably not good for us or the chicken. However, in general the nurtition calculations still hold up.

My view is still, if the chicken doesn't have access to a wide variety of forage then feed them a commercial feed.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119347285
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0032579119562289

one from 1932 and the other from 1979.

 

[Shadrach]

Three hours of freezing. Real feel -4C.
Everyone came out for a bit of late pale sunshine and a forage.
I captured Carbon again this afternoon. She hates being captured but once caught she settles down to the point she will sit on my lap until I move without fuss. Carbon has a tremor. I'm not sure what causes it. I was in the process of trying to feel exactly where it came form when we were interupted by another field group member. Carbon isn't doing well with the cold, neither is Henry. I've yet to meet a chicken that likes the cold. Some cope with it better than others but the opinion that chickens don't feel the cold because they've got feathers isn't born out from what I've seen.

As mentioned, I fed the chickens dried and fermented feed yesterday. I didn't notice any undigested grains or seeds in their droppings when I cleaned them out.

The spelt wheat arrived today and I mixed some dry in with the fermented feed. The chickens ate some. None of them ate what I consider to be an adequate amount by dry weight today. There were some overnight pellets left over in the coop when I checked this afternoon. At least this shows that the rats didn't eat it once the coop opened.

Fret grooming Henry. She's working her way back into favour.

Henry looking cold and uncomfortable.

Mow, Dig and Fret don't appear to be so bothered by the cold.

 

[MrsNorthie]

Some cope with it better than others but the opinion that chickens don't feel the cold because they've got feathers isn't born out from what I've seen.

So far, the Buffs seem to love 30-70 F (1-21 C) They are ok 20-25 degrees warmer as long as they have shade, a fan and plenty of water. I have the brooder heater mounted on the wall behind the roost, in the coop because we did have a couple of nights where we dipped into the mid to upper 20's (-3 to -1 C) and I wanted the warmth available. (but they did not seem to really take advantage of this.) It is high enough to not come in any contact with any bedding, and we covered the windows with plastic sheeting but even with that, the coop is not air tight so they get plenty of circulation. They seem to be comfortable and taking advantage of body heat, all lined up on either side of Blue.

One of the younger ladies is roosting with the Blue crew, on the end between Squeak and Spud. Pip is still solo guardian of the younger ladies, who have started to crouch for any of the boys that offer them bits of bananas or sardines, but mostly Blue. He makes me laugh, so hard, I give him the treats, and he immediately gets mobbed before he can even start the tidbitting call..but he does it anyway and very enthusiastically. He is no longer attacking and eats out of my hand, daily.