Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

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.

I think you have some hens of dubious moral integrity, or lack of adequate parental guidance. I've watched cockerels work for weeks, finding bits of food, escorting them here and there, standing guard while they lay eggs he didn't even fertlize, only to get a whack for even mentioning sex and deserted as soon as the senior rooster arrived.
Seems like your boy Blue is having an easy life.

 

[MrsNorthie]

I think you have some hens of dubious moral integrity, or lack of adequate parental guidance. I've watched cockerels work for weeks, finding bits of food, escorting them here and there, standing guard while they lay eggs he didn't even fertlize, only to get a whack for even mentioning sex and deserted as soon as the senior rooster arrived.
Seems like your boy Blue is having an easy life.

They are just fluffy bottomed tarts, but Blue make sure that they are well protected, they spend most of their day standing guard over the girls while they forage or flit around or laze around.

The boys get along very well, there have been some minor skirmishes, but Blue really does have control now and is quite clever. The other 4 boys seem to have job assignments and they do what is expected of them. It is really impressive. They are still a bit rough in their mating technique, but Blue seems to chastise them if they seem to actually be hurting the girls, but doesn't begrudge them trying it on occasionally. (may be his way of keeping a harmonic balance, and keeping the other boys on side with his reign.)

I think the planned expansion will make things even better. I want to double the size of the run and make some roost changes to the main coop. The don't really use all the space that they have now, but with some construction changes, making areas of interest and some strategic plantings, I think they will get more out of it.

 

[Perris]

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.

I added two more papers on that thread

Edited to add: see also now the paper linked in #143, on meat birds selecting a balanced diet when offered free choice.

Edited again to add: see now the paper linked in #196, on pullets laying more eggs and with better feed efficiency when allowed to self-select their food.

Checking, I find that the first one is now https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...trad-views-on-nutrition.1567953/post-26621992
and the second one is now #193,
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...trad-views-on-nutrition.1567953/post-26634627

I'm not sure why the number of the post decreased by 3 in each case from when I made the edit to now; perhaps if people delete posts those subsequent get renumbered at some point? I can't explain the being 3 out on the initial edit otherwise. Anyway the links should take anyone interested straight there now.

On the issue of diets in confinement, I don't believe good zoo or aviary birds are fed concentrates. Their keepers manage to give them an at-least adequate diet without resorting to ultra processed concentrated feeds or 'nutrient balancers'.

 

[Perris]

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.

I have been reading about why some species manage to succeed and expand their range, even spread round the entire planet, like us - and the birds, and since some of them have colonised the water, birds go even further than us! Any species that has expanded beyond its place of origin has met and overcome the challenges of unfamiliar environments, weather and climate, pests and diseases etc.. And of course, with those changes, came new and different foods.

So what have been identified as the keys to success?

Group living. Because they learn from each other (there's lots of evidence on this for chickens). Group living offers better predator protection, faster food finding, quicker problem solving - because as we keepers know, birds are individuals. They don't all think or act or react alike. And more heads are better than one; there is a better chance that one will solve the problem and some of the rest will learn from them.

Risk taking. Individuals that take risks can reap big rewards. It can also cost them their lives. The group learns from the experience of the individual risk taker. Those that are most set in their ways are also the most likely to die out, because everything changes, and to survive even in the same place you have to adapt to it.

It seems there are trade-offs with any trait, like cleverness or caution, and lots of types exist within a population because different types do better in different years, as circumstances change. For the group, a mix is most likely to lead to the survival of some.
Thus they find new foods.

 

[Shadrach]

I added two more papers on that thread

The first one is now https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...trad-views-on-nutrition.1567953/post-26621992
and the second one is now #193,
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...trad-views-on-nutrition.1567953/post-26634627

I'm not sure why the number of the post decreased by 3 in each case from when I made the edit to now; perhaps if people delete posts those subsequent get renumbered at some point? I can't explain the being 3 out on the initial edit otherwise. Anyway the links should take anyone interested straight there now.

On the issue of diets in confinement, I don't believe good zoo or aviary birds are fed concentrates. Their keepers manage to give them an at-least adequate diet without resorting to ultra processed concentrated feeds or 'nutrient balancers'.

Thanks, I'll have a read.
I find it odd that some people have faith in the science that suggests that commercial feed may have some shortfalls but not the same science that suggests in this case, commercial feed provides adequate nutrition.

I don't think creatures kept by zoos have undergone breeding programs that are designed to make that creature more productive than a natural diet can support at a price that makes ecomonic sense.

You've probably read this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6723656/

"In summary, there is only very limited evidence on the effectiveness of most fermented foods in gastrointestinal health, with the majority of studies being of low quality. Kefir is the fermented food most commonly investigated in terms of its impact in gastrointestinal health, with evidence suggesting it may be beneficial for lactose malabsorption and H. pylori eradication. No human studies have been conducted on the impact of kombucha, tempeh and kimchi in gastrointestinal health. It is worth noting the difficulty in undertaking and replicating fermented food studies given the significant variability of cultures and ingredients present even within food categories, which may partly explain heterogeneous findings. To conclude, there is insufficient evidence to determine the impact of fermented foods in gastrointestinal health and disease."

 

[Perris]

Thanks, I'll have a read.
I find it odd that some people have faith in the science that suggests that commercial feed may have some shortfalls but not the same science that suggests in this case, commercial feed provides adequate nutrition.

I don't think creatures kept by zoos have undergone breeding programs that are designed to make that creature more productive than a natural diet can support at a price that makes ecomonic sense.

You've probably read this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6723656/

"In summary, there is only very limited evidence on the effectiveness of most fermented foods in gastrointestinal health, with the majority of studies being of low quality. Kefir is the fermented food most commonly investigated in terms of its impact in gastrointestinal health, with evidence suggesting it may be beneficial for lactose malabsorption and H. pylori eradication. No human studies have been conducted on the impact of kombucha, tempeh and kimchi in gastrointestinal health. It is worth noting the difficulty in undertaking and replicating fermented food studies given the significant variability of cultures and ingredients present even within food categories, which may partly explain heterogeneous findings. To conclude, there is insufficient evidence to determine the impact of fermented foods in gastrointestinal health and disease."

thanks I hadn't seen that. But already got to an important caveat in the introduction: "The evidence for the effects of yoghurt and cheese on human health has been extensively reviewed elsewhere [12,13] and, therefore, this review will focus specifically on kefir and the major non-dairy fermented foods"

 

[Perris]

This shouldn't be ignored either

Conflicts of Interest​

E.D. has received an education grant from Alpro, received speaker fees from Yakult and research funding from Nestec Ltd, the Almond Board of California and the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council. M.R. has received speaker fees from Ryvita, Biokult, Symprove and Alpro and research funding from the Almond Board of California and the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council. K.W. has served as a consultant for Danone, has received speaker fees from Alpro and Yakult and research funding from Clasado Biosciences, Nestec Ltd, Almond Board of California and the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council, and is the coinventor of a mobile app to support patients following the low FODMAP diet. SC reports no conflicts of interest.

 

[Perris]

I find it odd that some people have faith in the science that suggests that commercial feed may have some shortfalls but not the same science that suggests in this case, commercial feed provides adequate nutrition.

are you implying I'm cherry-picking 'the science'?

First, I have not, I think, actually done that. Second, commercial feed provides adequate nutrition only under the terms of its aims, which is why the methodology of the studies should not be ignored. They aim to maximise output at minimal cost, and the 'science' is performed usually on birds that are not normal - they're either days old chicks, or birds that have had their caeca removed surgically before the 'trials' in order to simplify the results and their interpretation, and/or the feed trials are performed on Nth generation severely selected lab strains of birds that once upon a time were chickens of the sort that you and I look after.

I don't think creatures kept by zoos have undergone breeding programs that are designed to make that creature more productive than a natural diet can support at a price that makes ecomonic sense.

This is an important caveat. It would be interesting to know many people reading this thread keep modern high production breeds. I know it started as a thread about ex- commercial birds aka rescues, but most people who post photos seem to have some or all heritage breeds or backyard mutts, both of which were capable of laying c. 150-200 eggs a year a hundred and fifty years ago, long before commercial feed appeared on the shelves of shops.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-many-eggs-were-laid-by-hens-150-years-ago.1593024/
At least, I haven't noticed anyone here posting about their hens laying 300+ eggs per annum, which is what modern layers feed is presumably designed for, if I've understood your point aright.

 

[Shadrach]

are you implying I'm cherry-picking 'the science'?

First, I have not, I think, actually done that. Second, commercial feed provides adequate nutrition only under the terms of its aims, which is why the methodology of the studies should not be ignored. They aim to maximise output at minimal cost, and the 'science' is performed usually on birds that are not normal - they're either days old chicks, or birds that have had their caeca removed surgically before the 'trials' in order to simplify the results and their interpretation, and/or the feed trials are performed on Nth generation severely selected lab strains of birds that once upon a time were chickens of the sort that you and I look after.


This is an important caveat. It would be interesting to know many people reading this thread keep modern high production breeds. I know it started as a thread about ex- commercial birds aka rescues, but most people who post photos seem to have some or all heritage breeds or backyard mutts, both of which were capable of laying c. 150-200 eggs a year a hundred and fifty years ago, long before commercial feed appeared on the shelves of shops.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/how-many-eggs-were-laid-by-hens-150-years-ago.1593024/
At least, I haven't noticed anyone here posting about their hens laying 300+ eggs per annum, which is what modern layers feed is presumably designed for, if I've understood your point aright.

No I'm not suggesting you are cherry picking studies because to me that suggest an intention to deceive and I don't think that is your intention. What you have done is provide studies to support your view and that is perfectly acceptable. However there are a similar number of studies that state there is no measurable benefit to the overall health of those who consume fermented feeds, despite the measurable chemical changes.

 

[Perris]

well the only one you've cited to support the idea that there's no measurable benefit (is that the same as 'insufficient evidence', which was the phrase cited in the conclusion?) concerns non-dairy fermented feed, kimchi and suchlike, written by people who have received benefits from the processed dairy foods industry. (The only dairy product they included was kefir, for which they did find evidence of beneficial effects.) Can you give the refs for the other 'similar studies', ideally ones written by people independent of the food industry, and ones which don't basically say we don't know the effect on the human/chicken biome and we need to do more research on it?