Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[fuzzi]

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...under-threat-as-bird-flu-takes-hold-worldwide

Seems like everyone is loosing heritage breeds of all kinds of livestock.

Do they have to cull an entire flock if one bird tests positive? They're doing that here in the US, not allowing any to acquire natural immunity.

 

[Molpet]

Do they have to cull an entire flock if one bird tests positive? They're doing that here in the US, not allowing any to acquire natural immunity.

Not sure

 

[Shadrach]

The point is moot, now.

Samuel went into the chicks brooder, had them cornered, in a hostile stance. I grabbed him and restrained him. I shut the brooder before returning him to the coop.

Martha was standing there, didn't defend the chicks at all, though I have seen her launch at the other hens if they came close.

Later I was standing outside the door to the coop and the chicks started screaming. I looked and Samuel was chasing them around the coop, not giving pecks, but was in full out attack mode, focused on them like prey.

I took him out and dispatched him out of sight of the others. It's the first time I have had to do that task, and I cried.

I can now see a pattern, from an initial attack that left a chick unconscious with a head wound, then a second attack the next day with a worse wound, to the other examples of him being aggressive against the chicks, which I saw. None of the hens have done more than a short peck, none have chased the chicks.

Thanks for everyone's input.

I wonder what went wrong there. I wasn't aware there had been other attacks. You've done the right thing in that case and it's not a pleasant task.

 

[Shadrach]

Do they have to cull an entire flock if one bird tests positive? They're doing that here in the US, not allowing any to acquire natural immunity.

They have in the past. There have been some debate about how DEFRA primarily has handled the epidemic. I'm in favour of developing a natural immunity which more often then not most species manage to do. Killing many many times more than the virus might seems stupid.

 

[fuzzi]

I wonder what went wrong there. I wasn't aware there had been other attacks. You've done the right thing in that case and it's not a pleasant task.

Thank you.


First attack documented here:

Post in thread 'fuzzi's Chicken Journal' https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/fuzzis-chicken-journal.1550586/post-27670164

Having trouble making the link go to the correct post. Here's a screenshot:

 

[Shadrach]

A lovely sunny afternoon. It did get a bit chilly in the evening.
Went out with family earlier which left a couple of hours for the chickens.
They all seem okay. No nuttier than usual anyway.

 

[BDutch]

@fuzzi sorry about your agressive rooster. I suppose you did the right thing.

@Molpet My country had many problems with this nasty bird flu. But now all farmers and hobbyist , except for a few high poultry dense areas near water, are allowed to free range again without restrictions. Probably until autumn when they find a new contaminated farm.
Hobbyist who send a bird to check on the HpAI who get bad news are obliged to let the NVWA (food and vet health service) kill the whole flock. I’ve been reading about 50% survives if you don’t report. Don’t know how reliable that info is. A few hobbyists on the Dutch chicken forum said they were not certain what was happening and suspected the deadly bird flu after the many death and did have many survivors.

 

[Perris]

https://www.theguardian.com/environ...under-threat-as-bird-flu-takes-hold-worldwide

Seems like everyone is loosing heritage breeds of all kinds of livestock.

I think that headline was seriously misleading (and imo the article as a whole falls well below the Guardian's usual standard). There are multiple reasons for the decline of traditional breeds, and currently AI is not one of them.

If you look at this
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/bird-flu-avian-influenza-latest-situation-in-england
you will read that
"In the United Kingdom, the following number of cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) have been confirmed since 1 October 2023:

• 4 cases in England (298 since October 2021)
• 2 cases in Scotland (51 since October 2021)
• 0 cases in Wales (15 since October 2021)
• 0 cases in Northern Ireland (7 since October 2021)...

The UK has self-declared zonal freedom from highly pathogenic avian influenza for Great Britain with effect from 29 March 2024... The UK does not currently have outbreaks of HPAI in poultry or other captive birds"

The policy guidelines are at the same site. It is, in short, a 3 km protection zone, and 10-km surveillance zone is set up for every HPAI case. All the poultry of the infected premises are required to be killed and buried, and all other free-range poultry within the protection zone are forced to be kept indoors. So only birds in infected flocks are slaughtered. The vast majority of these are commercial not backyard flocks.

Last winter, between October 01, 2022, and January 13, 2023, a total of 162 cases of HPAI were detected in the UK; 143 in England, 15 in Scotland, 3 in Wales, and 1 in Northern Ireland, and they resulted in the culling of more than 4.6 million birds. 162 cases. 4,600,000 birds slaughtered.

The policy of culling has caused far more deaths than the disease. Chickens are not naturally susceptible to it: it's a disease of ducks, principally, and only chickens kept in industrial numbers and settings are really threatened by it. See https://www.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journal/jgv/10.1099/jgv.0.001852

Note especially from that paper "Clearly, the lack of chicken-to-chicken transmission for H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4 contradicts the UK poultry epidemiology where a significant proportion of commercial chicken premises have been affected by the ongoing H5N1 HPAIV epizootic, with a high percentage of infected chickens recorded during outbreak investigations at clinically affected epidemiological units [46]. These field observations suggest that factors such as, the larger numbers of chickens with greater environmental contamination at commercial premises and prolonged contact with infected carcasses, along with other possible local or environmental factors, serve to successfully initiate the spread of infection within this species...transmission among chickens of H5N8 and H5N1 clade 2.3.4.4 HPAIVs (both isolated in late 2020) was inefficient and was accompanied by an absence of environmental contamination which included bedding, faeces and drinking water [39]. This finding suggested that the occasional transmission to R1 chickens was likely due to close contact between the chickens. "

 

[Perris]

Do they have to cull an entire flock if one bird tests positive? They're doing that here in the US, not allowing any to acquire natural immunity.

Yes, but commercial flocks have very little immunity to anything. Their environment is sterile from conception. Their breeding cares not for their immune system, so they lack the resilience and robustness that a bird needs to survive a serious health challenge such as AI.

 

[ManueB]

The point is moot, now.

Samuel went into the chicks brooder, had them cornered, in a hostile stance. I grabbed him and restrained him. I shut the brooder before returning him to the coop.

Martha was standing there, didn't defend the chicks at all, though I have seen her launch at the other hens if they came close.

Later I was standing outside the door to the coop and the chicks started screaming. I looked and Samuel was chasing them around the coop, not giving pecks, but was in full out attack mode, focused on them like prey.

I took him out and dispatched him out of sight of the others. It's the first time I have had to do that task, and I cried.

I can now see a pattern, from an initial attack that left a chick unconscious with a head wound, then a second attack the next day with a worse wound, to the other examples of him being aggressive against the chicks, which I saw. None of the hens have done more than a short peck, none have chased the chicks.

Thanks for everyone's input.

I'm so sorry you had to go through this, especially after loosing Joël.
And I also believe you did what you had to do in your circumstances.


To challenge a bit this idea of "normal" roosters not being a threat for chicks, and let you know Samuel wasn't an exception, I would like to recall my own first experience of a rooster with chicks. I apologise as this is just an old story, and rather long and tedious, for those of you that were on this thread then.

Almost 2 years ago, I was just like you Fuzzi, asking here about my rooster Théo showing aggressive behaviour toward the chicks and the broody, with this video.

I was given more or less the same answers.
Théo, unlike Samuel, never actually hurt the chicks. But this was mostly due to the fact that the broody Chipie protected them ; most of the times not physically, as she had already taken a beating by Théo after fighting him a few months before, but by taking the chicks away from his reach. If she was cornered, like in the video she did try to protect them.

They were free ranging, and I stay at home, so this meant less possibilities of dangerous situations. I really wanted to try to keep Théo.

Those four chicks grew away from the flock. They only shared the coop with the other adults at night, and when it was raining. Théo kept chasing the girl chicks away, without hurting them, but he attacked and terrorised Gaston, the cockerel.

Long story short, two years after, another hatch, and Théo still here but now dominated by Gaston... things have gotten better. I know that he will systematically chase and be aggressive to any newcomers, chicks or adults. He considers them strangers. However, he has never really came to hurt any other chickens. He is a pain for the hens, because he keeps trying to tread them and is so clumsy he rarely succeeds, but he doesn't actually wounds them. He is half bantam when two thirds of the hens are standards which maybe explain s his difficulty and the fact that they are less afraid of him. And when he lost dominance, the possibility of him harassing them really diminished, and he now spends a good part of his day avoiding the dominant rooster. I think his change of status has been the key to making him somewhat nicer, and that it may have also played a role the other way round into Samuel's behaviour.

Théo's manners with females and youngsters nowadays is sometimes inadequate, sometimes fine, and even endearing. For example, one of my original ex-batt's Blanche is very unwell, taking a long time to die, and he watches over her most of the day carefully. He will look out for her whenever I put her in isolation in all the places he knows she can be. However, he also tries to mate her every now and then, which is unacceptable in her state.

I really don't mean to say that it could have worked out with Samuel that way. The flock and the chicks needed to be protected from him. He was causing harm.

But I just want to say that not all roosters will have the perfect, or even the usual attitude toward other members of the flock, and it can eventually work out if the chicken keepers have the possibility to adapt their settings, or their behaviour, or their expectations.
Not all humans are great with others of their kind but there is a wide range between being impolite or moody and actually hurting people.

And I also want to insist that it's not only about the environment or the keeper's posture. None of the three other males that grew up here have shown those type of behaviour and temper.

June 2022 Théo sharing some cherries.

Two weeks ago.