Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[tranquiliti]

Tax: Junior, Melba, and Chief enjoying afternoon sunshine last Saturday.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

View attachment 4061188
Tax: Junior, Melba, and Chief enjoying afternoon sunshine last Saturday.

Chillaxin’!

 

[BDutch]

Thanks for the welcome! We live on a very tiny urban lot, so it’s hard to say “free range” with a straight face, but we plan to let them out at least several hours a day while we’re present. We have a side yard that has converted itself to jungle, so I’ll point them in that direction so that they can do their chicken destruction. I’ll put up aviary netting, because we have high hawk predation. This is a juvenile Cooper’s hawk, perched on the fence edging the jungle area:
View attachment 4061033

The climate up here in the mountains was until very recently lovely, four-seasons temperate, rarely too cold and rarely too hot. But in the last 12 years or so, it’s gone from USDA zone 6B through 7A to 7B, an unprecedented change in such a short time. (This is a measure of average winter low temps; I don’t know how widely it’s used beyond the US.) Last summer had an unbroken month+ stretch above 32°C, which was absolutely unheard of. I’m focusing on providing shade. We hit -14°C a few times this winter, which is not over.

And it’s only going to get weirder and more extreme, of course. So who knows?

Thanks gor the explanation.
You have a wonderful style of wrinting (for a Dutch citizen that is).

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Thanks gor the explanation.
You have a wonderful style of wrinting (for a Dutch citizen that is).

Thanks, I hope that means you can make sense out of it! I think out loud (“verbal processing”), which is a terrible thing to inflict upon others.

 

[BDutch]

Wow. Thats a big change. In that time in NJ I moved one zone from 5b to 6a.

In the Netherlands people don’t use such zones.
But we do have climate changes too.
People say we are having the climate of what used to be the climate of Northern France. Plants that had problems with the cold seem to flourish here now if they get enough, but not too much water. Some summers it gets too hot. Due to the changes, we experience summer weather more often in spring and autumn. Long periods of drought and sometimes sudden heavy rains become problematic. Weather conditions are more extreme and the water in the rivers is more often dangerously high.

PS Edited some horrible language /typo mistakes

 

[Mother of Chaos]

In the Netherlands people don’t use such zones.
But we do have climate changes too.
People say we are having the climate of what used to be the climate of Northern France. Plants that had problems with the cold seem to flourish here now if they get enough, but not too much water. Some summers it becomes too hot. The changes gives us more spell of summer weather in spring and autumn. It aldo became a problem. Long periods of drought and suddenly heavy rains for quite some. The weathers has more extremes and rivers flooded dangerously.

The county just south of ours has many apple orchards. Like many other tree fruits, apple trees need a minimum number of chill hours to break dormancy. If winters warm a few degrees and they no longer get enough chill hours, they generally have poor flowering and reduced fruit set.

What will happen to fruit-growing areas that no longer reliably get the traditional number of chill hours?

(Chill hours protect fruit trees from breaking dormancy early in a freak winter warm spell, blooming too soon, and then getting zapped when cold temps return.)

 

[HiEverybirdy]

Thanks for the welcome! We live on a very tiny urban lot, so it’s hard to say “free range” with a straight face, but we plan to let them out at least several hours a day while we’re present. We have a side yard that has converted itself to jungle, so I’ll point them in that direction so that they can do their chicken destruction. I’ll put up aviary netting, because we have high hawk predation. This is a juvenile Cooper’s hawk, perched on the fence edging the jungle area:
View attachment 4061033

The climate up here in the mountains was until very recently lovely, four-seasons temperate, rarely too cold and rarely too hot. But in the last 12 years or so, it’s gone from USDA zone 6B through 7A to 7B, an unprecedented change in such a short time. (This is a measure of average winter low temps; I don’t know how widely it’s used beyond the US.) Last summer had an unbroken month+ stretch above 32°C, which was absolutely unheard of. I’m focusing on providing shade. We hit -14°C a few times this winter, which is not over.

And it’s only going to get weirder and more extreme, of course. So who knows?

Southern Appalachia in the house! We're in far east Tennessee. Welcome to chickens and welcome to this thread. It's a wonderful place for discussion even if you can't, unfortunately, have roosters

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Southern Appalachia in the house! We're in far east Tennessee. Welcome to chickens and welcome to this thread. It's a wonderful place for discussion even if you can't, unfortunately, have roosters

Thanks, and go Vols!! (hope you’re a Tennessee fan )

 

[SimpleJenn]

A few of the babies that have hatched here. Older chicks are doing a very good job helping take care of them.





That's Red Hen (or Red Rooster) who is very helpful with the babies. I got 4 chicks for Valentine's day, and they have been invaluable at helping me with the new birds.
I had tonsil-removal surgery Wednesday so haven't been able to be quite as hands-on with the birds. My mother-in-law got to help yesterday when the bulk hatched.
We're setting up a bigger brooder tonight and hope to get these babies in their growout coop at the end of March.

 

[fuzzi]

Whew, no kidding! NC has three regions: mountains (west), Piedmont (central), and Coastal Plain (east), and Durham is just barely Piedmont, very close to Coastal Plain. Raleigh-Durham can be brutal in the summer.

WNC used to be the summering area for wealthier people nearer the NC and SC coasts, escaping the heat, yellow fever, etc.

:waving:

Eastern NC here, Pitt County. We're zone 8a, usually only get one small snowfall a year. It's hot and humid during the summer, so I have a hoop coop.