Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[ManueB]

Personalities come into it too; despite being a real heritage breed, and now in her 7th year, Venka has never gone broody - yet she has lots of kids running around here (some that look just like her and some more obviously hybrids), thanks to other hens in the flock doing all the nurturing work for her. I think some hens are smart enough to reproduce their genes without effort beyond laying the egg, like a cuckoo, being quite happy to see others playing broody and raising their kids for them.

My experience with chicks is very small, I let two hens sit, a year apart from each other, with eggs from a neighbour. From the first hatch, two of the three pullets, Merle and Léa, are very often broody, more or less once every six weeks. Merle, like Mow, started thinking about sitting as soon as she began laying : I thought she had parasites because she was plucking her feathers out and dustbathing all the time. A few days after she was broody !
This year's hatch, none of the four pullets have shown the least inclination to sit. They have been laying for three months by now and the winter is exceptionally warm, whereas it was exceptionally cold last year. They were raised by Léa, who is actually broody right now, in the exact same environment, apart from all the changes we have no control over like climate and chicken relationships.

So my small experience tends to make me think either personalities or genetics do play a role.

Getting the message that chickens do not automatically send all ingested feed to their crop is quite difficult to get accross. Most people assume that all feed enters the crop.
Getting people to understand that it is the way one feeds chickens that determines what get sent to the crop is even more difficult; a constant supply of feed is likely to give minimum crop use. Meal time feeding tends to promote crop use.

These points and the time taken to digest various feed types have implications for the crop full at night, empty in the morning test advice.

I need to read the article more in depth before reviewing. Two details I wondered about. Recommended quantity of feed here is 100 grams daily. Not 150 or 200. As far as I know, while we don't have pellets here, there isn't a great difference in the type of food available, so I wonder why that difference.
The other point is about hard things not being an issue for digestion. I've had the experience many times that chickens will leave out things that are both hard and too big. They can for example tear apart a whole apple : but they won't eat a whole nut or the bigger squash seeds if they can't manage to break them. Are my chickens impaired or is this something true for all chickens ?

 

[Molpet]

Saddles aren't really a going proposition at the allotments. I would need to be there first thing in the morning to put them on. One shouldn't have hens roosting wearing saddles.

Ummm you're the first person I have heard of taking saddles off daily.
I had concerns about bugs, dust bathing, temperature control , getting hung up in brush by saddle, and feather condition. None of these were apparent to me.

I have only used on a few hens and left them on until they fell off. I couldn't tell by looking at feathers which hen lost her saddle. I only found one saddle, that came off in the coop. The others are somewhere in the poultry yard.

 

[Shadrach]

My experience with chicks is very small, I let two hens sit, a year apart from each other, with eggs from a neighbour. From the first hatch, two of the three pullets, Merle and Léa, are very often broody, more or less once every six weeks. Merle, like Mow, started thinking about sitting as soon as she began laying : I thought she had parasites because she was plucking her feathers out and dustbathing all the time. A few days after she was broody !
This year's hatch, none of the four pullets have shown the least inclination to sit. They have been laying for three months by now and the winter is exceptionally warm, whereas it was exceptionally cold last year. They were raised by Léa, who is actually broody right now, in the exact same environment, apart from all the changes we have no control over like climate and chicken relationships.
View attachment 3741521
So my small experience tends to make me think either personalities or genetics do play a role.

I need to read the article more in depth before reviewing. Two details I wondered about. Recommended quantity of feed here is 100 grams daily. Not 150 or 200. As far as I know, while we don't have pellets here, there isn't a great difference in the type of food available, so I wonder why that difference.
The other point is about hard things not being an issue for digestion. I've had the experience many times that chickens will leave out things that are both hard and too big. They can for example tear apart a whole apple : but they won't eat a whole nut or the bigger squash seeds if they can't manage to break them. Are my chickens impaired or is this something true for all chickens ?

The variation in recommended feed quantities is fairly consistant from all the manufacturers I've used. 120 grams daily is the most common. Does it state 100 grams on the feed label of the feed you buy, or is this a general accepted ration? Not sure where you got 200 grams from.

I think you'll find that is the size rather than the hardness that puts chickens off ingesting some foodstuffs. As I've pointed out, if they can eat and digest (ground to pulp eventually in the gizzard) granite and small stones then the hardness in say a nut isn't likely to discourage them.

Most chickens prefer small feed particles when it comes to grain and seeds and even pelleted feed. Whatever they ingest has to get through the narrow opening at the start of the proventriculus to reach the gizzard which is where the size reduction takes place. Getting bigger food particles into the crop isn't so much of a problem.

 

[Shadrach]

Personalities come into it too; despite being a real heritage breed, and now in her 7th year, Venka has never gone broody - yet she has lots of kids running around here (some that look just like her and some more obviously hybrids), thanks to other hens in the flock doing all the nurturing work for her. I think some hens are smart enough to reproduce their genes without effort beyond laying the egg, like a cuckoo, being quite happy to see others playing broody and raising their kids for them.

Yup, a constant irritation for people who are trying to hatch eggs with a broody that she laid rather than the donatations from other hens.

 

[fluffycrow]

It's been a rare for me to have to go to the extremes I read about to discourage a hen from broody behaviour. If one is quick enough and remove the eggs that usually does it. Fret, while still intent on going broody isn't sitting now having had her eggs stolen by Bucket Boy. Bucket Boy isn't fooled. He knows she's thinking about it and intends to resume her hatching plan at the earliest opportunity.
Both when it comes to Mow.

I got told the hens wont go broody it's been bred out of them story everywhere I've been involved with the care of the chickens. In Catalonia, Hetfordshire free range farm and now here at the allotments.
My view is broodiness is suppressed rather than removed. Give the chickens a conducive environment for raising chicks; get one to sit and hatch and others are likely to get the idea. When I started in Catalonia none of the hens would go broody. When I left all the hens went broody. A similar story on the farm in Hertfordshire and getting the hens to sit and hatch became my job.
I got told the same story by C at the allotments and I'll bet this year two out of the three hens currently here will go broody.

I really hope you're right. For years the daily lives of the birds in the flock has been the same. They get to go out every morning, and the door gets shut during the night, sometimes hours after they have roosted. They have access to many different forage options on the property, they eat a lot of the scraps messy humans leave behind after eating, and on top of that their "chicken food". They are open to lay both in the coop, and out, which they have done

(picture of a nest they built on the property during the summer), but they never sit, and eventually forget about it. On the other hand, the bantam mix breeds that are far less "privileged", with no access to free range have both gone broody. I really don't care which female from the main group goes broody. I just want to have the Tsouloufati chicks grow up the best way possible, with a mom to teach them things from the very beginning. Even between the chicks that Cruella raised, which did not learn anything about ranging, and the brooder raised chicks, I can see massive differences in maturity. They know what is a threat and what is not, while the others are still darting at the sound of a dove. A broody hen can teach them far better, and far quicker, than what it takes the whole flock to teach the juveniles. In my experience, it takes a whole year for brooder babies to be aware enough to make it, while the broody raised chicks, appart from their adolescent wandering, are indistinguishable

 

[Molpet]

Whatever they ingest has to get through the narrow opening at the start of the proventriculus to reach the gizzard which is where the size reduction takes place.

I always wondered about beat up mice, quartered fledgling robins and such.

 

[Perris]

digest (ground to pulp eventually in the gizzard) granite and small stones

I don't think they do completely, at least not always; periodically in poop you will see tiny smooth stones that have escaped the gizzard and passed on with the material being digested. Once upon a time such stones could sell for large sums, if old handbooks are to be believed.

 

[Ladies-Eight]

Ex Batts good morning one and all!

Tea is ready.

Temperature is in the 50s with high pollen count.

Have a great day!

 

[Shadrach]

I always wondered about beat up mice, quartered fledgling robins and such.

I wondered about this. There is some debate regard what digestive processes go on in the crop. I would assume that mice etc get sent to the crop. What does the peristaltic contracts on the way to the crop do to a mouse? Does a mouse sit and rot in the crop until it is soft enough to be passed on to the gizzard. The article reports the findings in the studies. There is a lot that the studies don't cover and a lot in the studies such as the digestive systems PH values that are too complicated to include in the article, if im expecting it to be read and understood by the majority of readers. What I've tried to do as I point out in the article is show that not all feed goes to the crop, it's how the chicken feeds that seems to dictate crop use and adding water to any feed reduces the available nutrition before the feed even enters the digestive system.

 

[Shadrach]

I don't think they do completely, at least not always; periodically in poop you will see tiny smooth stones that have escaped the gizzard and passed on with the material being digested. Once upon a time such stones could sell for large sums, if old handbooks are to be believed.

Safe to assume that if such stoned were worth lots of money they are a bit of a rarity.​