Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[notabitail]

Sunny mostly but rather cool when dusk arrived.
Four hours today; two hours in the extended run while I did stuff and two hours on the field once I could keep an eye on them.

Despite having witnessed it over and over again it still hasn't fully regitered just how quickly chickens can disappear. I look up and locate the group look down to do something for a few seconds and when I look up again the chickens have gone! All of them.
I can see most of the field and it still takes me a while to locate them and usually they are nowhere near where I think they might be.View attachment 4115488

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Mine disappeared straight into my sister's garden. Ugh.

 

[BDutch]

Muricans

What are Muricans?
Btw I cant listen to the music at the moment bc my husband is sleeping next to me.

View attachment 4115953

I wonder if a would scare predators too.

 

[fuzzi]

Random non-chicken post for which I will owe plenty of tax: among a bunch of unrelated interests, I’m a choral singer and have been for 50+ years. One of my current choirs (I’m in three) is the Asheville Symphony Chorus, and our spring concert is tomorrow night. Its theme is - weirdly - “Majesty”, five pieces related to coronations and other royal celebrations which are not in the radar of most of us ‘Muricans. Our dress rehearsal was tonight; performance is tomorrow night.

One of the pieces was composed for the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and I love it, because the alto part (I’m a mezzo soprano singing 2nd alto) is just gorgeous, including that we actually carry the melody for much of the piece, and it gets right on up into my tessitura. Reverential pause for us altos, who are usually the pragmatic workhorses of choral music and rarely get any fun parts at all, dammit.

I was quite chuffed (the Britishness is rubbing off!) that we’re performing this piece, because it’s so lovely to sing and has a few complexities, and we sound pretty dang good. So I went to YouTube to listen to the actual performance so that I could be even more smug that we were singing it, and found that it was sung for the Queen by an auditioned, selected group of… 11- to 14-year-olds.

* sigh * Anyway, sorry; just an adrenaline rush after performing.

- The Call of Wisdom (William Todd), as sung by adults, not us:

That's lovely. I'm about as low an alto as you've probably heard, have sung in little church choirs for 30 years, though one about 50 strong. Current one is about 10 members, and the song leader is starting to have us sing in harmonies. Most of the Alto lines are not fun, but it's good to push oneself out of the comfort zone that is melody.

Rahab and Martha (RIP)

 

[fuzzi]

What are Muricans?
Btw I cant listen to the music at the moment bc my husband is sleeping next to me.

I wonder if a would scare predators too.

Americans = "Muricans". I think it's meant to be a derogatory term.

I wonder if hawks would be interested in a balloon'd chicken?

 

[Sally PB]

Let's hear it for Contraltos!!! If I could write an opera, the hero would be a bass or baritone, the heroine would be a contralto, and they would have a lot of soprano and tenor servants!

Tax:

Squeak, taking a nap on my lap.

 

[Molpet]

Random non-chicken post for which I will owe plenty of tax: among a bunch of unrelated interests, I’m a choral singer and have been for 50+ years. One of my current choirs (I’m in three) is the Asheville Symphony Chorus, and our spring concert is tomorrow night. Its theme is - weirdly - “Majesty”, five pieces related to coronations and other royal celebrations which are not in the radar of most of us ‘Muricans. Our dress rehearsal was tonight; performance is tomorrow night.

One of the pieces was composed for the late Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and I love it, because the alto part (I’m a mezzo soprano singing 2nd alto) is just gorgeous, including that we actually carry the melody for much of the piece, and it gets right on up into my tessitura. Reverential pause for us altos, who are usually the pragmatic workhorses of choral music and rarely get any fun parts at all, dammit.

I was quite chuffed (the Britishness is rubbing off!) that we’re performing this piece, because it’s so lovely to sing and has a few complexities, and we sound pretty dang good. So I went to YouTube to listen to the actual performance so that I could be even more smug that we were singing it, and found that it was sung for the Queen by an auditioned, selected group of… 11- to 14-year-olds.

* sigh * Anyway, sorry; just an adrenaline rush after performing.

- The Call of Wisdom (William Todd), as sung by adults, not us:

Congratulations, so exciting

 

[Perris]

The final batch of introductions: meet Glais, Hay, Merioneth and Talgarth

Their novice and long-suffering broody Oxwich was sitting for 5 weeks, because I waited for nearly a week before giving her eggs (the first few days to check she was serious, and then a few more days for desired hatching egg availability); then one week into the incubation, Polka went broody in the nest box next door; then another week in, they swapped boxes, so that 1 week later Polka got a brood of chicks after sitting for only 2 weeks, while Oxwich had to hang on for another week before hers hatched.

I have performed a lot of jiggery-pokery in the coop they share to try to avoid predictable tragedies, sometimes in responsive mode and not always successfully. One egg got knocked out the nest about the time they switched nests, and one fully formed chick was crushed apparently when half out of the shell, but O's surviving four pictured above and Po's five that I introduced last week (https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-28576604 ; one of hers died around day 13/14, an unusual time for embryos to pass, but coinciding with the nest swap) seem to be coping with this pseudo-colonial brooding arrangement. It would be really interesting if these two broodies do join forces properly now that they're all out and about in the garden, and the 1 week difference in the chicks' ages gets less significant with each passing day. Oxwich is Polka's daughter or niece, so that might help.

 

[RoyalChick]

The final batch of introductions: meet Glais, Hay, Merioneth and Talgarth
View attachment 4116162
Their novice and long-suffering broody Oxwich was sitting for 5 weeks, because I waited for nearly a week before giving her eggs (the first few days to check she was serious, and then a few more days for desired hatching egg availability); then one week into the incubation, Polka went broody in the nest box next door; then another week in, they swapped boxes, so that 1 week later Polka got a brood of chicks after sitting for only 2 weeks, while Oxwich had to hang on for another week before hers hatched.

I have performed a lot of jiggery-pokery in the coop they share to try to avoid predictable tragedies, sometimes in responsive mode and not always successfully. One egg got knocked out the nest about the time they switched nests, and one fully formed chick was crushed apparently when half out of the shell, but O's surviving four pictured above and Po's five that I introduced last week (https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-28576604 ; one of hers died around day 13/14, an unusual time for embryos to pass, but coinciding with the nest swap) seem to be coping with this pseudo-colonial brooding arrangement. It would be really interesting if these two broodies do join forces properly now that they're all out and about in the garden, and the 1 week difference in the chicks' ages gets less significant with each passing day. Oxwich is Polka's daughter or niece, so that might help.

Good to see that they have already learned the importance of standing in the food bowl to ensure maximum access!

 

[Shadrach]

View attachment 4115953

It won't be long before one can afford a tracking device. There are some very small ones on the market, mostly for short term wild bird tracking but they're expensive.
I wonder if one did attach a helium filled balloon to Fret whether should would jump and float from one place to another.

 

[Shadrach]

Warm when the sun was shining but chilly in the early evening. Four hours today.