Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[BDutch]

Except this year Puffin started laying fairy eggs (3 to date).

I had a fairy egg of one the Amrocks too a few days ago. Posted the photo on my own thread too.

There is a drop in the number of eggs too. The Amrocks obvious have more difficulties with the warm weather (>30 °C) than my small bantams. I dont know if there is another reason.

1. Amrock, Gin or Tonic (44 - 48 g)
2-3 Dutch (30 - 34 g)
4 Fairy egg from Gin or Tonic.

Is this how you comfort your soul bc the time to say goodbye to Fret is near?
Of course I hope for a miracle too.

 

[Shadrach]

"Is this how you comfort your soul bc the time to say goodbye to Fret is near?
Of course I hope for a miracle too.

"

Well, in a way I suppose. I listen to a lot of music. Sometimes a track just seems appropriate,
Here's the bad news.
I've been watching chickens die for close to 25 years. I've seen hundreds die, some culled at end of maximum productivity, others for meat, the sick and the old and the injured.
Some I have grieved for more than others much as one might for the people one makes contact with in ones life. I have to be honest and it probably means I have some kind of psychological problem or other, I've grieved far longer and far harder for chickens I have known than I have for any human and that includes my mother and father.
There's more, one might have thought after so many deaths one would become hardened off to them. I don't seem to have got there. It hasn't got any easier.

 

[Shadrach]

And yet you adamantly warned me against getting a rooster...

One can only go on the information one has. If I had known you were going to get a feather duster from an established flock with a first class CV I might have written differently. He is gorgeous and no wonder that bunch of floozies you've collected adore him.
I'm delighted to be proven inaccurate.

 

[Shadrach]

Do you know how old Fret is @Shadrach ?

I didn't until today. I spoke to C. Got to within a couple of months.
C brought Fret to the field in the early spring of 2019. Fret was about eighteen months old. So Fret is seven years old plus some months. Older than I thought.

 

[Sally PB]

So Fret is seven years old plus some months.

Being with you, I'm sure these past 3 1/2+ years have been the best of her life.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

I didn't until today. I spoke to C. Got to within a couple of months.
C brought Fret to the field in the early spring of 2019. Fret was about eighteen months old. So Fret is seven years old plus some months. Older than I thought.

Poor sweetie. She’s had a good long life, most of it under your care.

 

[Ribh]

One can only go on the information one has. If I had known you were going to get a feather duster from an established flock with a first class CV I might have written differently. He is gorgeous and no wonder that bunch of floozies you've collected adore him.
I'm delighted to be proven inaccurate.

Did you seriously think I would get anything else? My penchant for the weird & beautiful is rather well known!

 

[Shadrach]

Three and a half hours today. 29C at mid afternoon and everyone was showing it with spread wings and open beaks.
Fret came out with a bit of encouragement and settled close to my chair or on my plot. I found she'll drink from the container in the picture above. She drank a lot today compared to yesterday. Two container fulls minus spillage so at least one. No force involved. She managed the ramp when going to roost and got on the perch. She didn't manage to join Tull and Sylph on the extension roost bar and sat on the ground half under the coop. It's cool there.

 

[MrsNorthie]

"Is this how you comfort your soul bc the time to say goodbye to Fret is near?
Of course I hope for a miracle too.

"

Well, in a way I suppose. I listen to a lot of music. Sometimes a track just seems appropriate,
Here's the bad news.
I've been watching chickens die for close to 25 years. I've seen hundreds die, some culled at end of maximum productivity, others for meat, the sick and the old and the injured.
Some I have grieved for more than others much as one might for the people one makes contact with in ones life. I have to be honest and it probably means I have some kind of psychological problem or other, I've grieved far longer and far harder for chickens I have known than I have for any human and that includes my mother and father.
There's more, one might have thought after so many deaths one would become hardened off to them. I don't seem to have got there. It hasn't got any easier.
View attachment 4162668

If you have a psychological disorder, you are not alone. Apart from my son and my grandfather, the human losses that I have faced don't hit me particularly hard, recently, my dad died just before Thanksgiving last year, but he did it to himself and was mean, my Grandmother, who was just cruel and manipulative.

I still have the ashes of Angus and Ribbies by my bed, I can't bring myself to bury them, because if we do move, I can't bear leaving them behind.

I cried like a baby reading this thread with the losses of all the original chickens, then Carbon and Henry too and I was sobbing over Fret or when @no fly zone lost Skeksis.

I cried for the turkeys we had to harvest, because they were trying to kill Major Tom and Alfie, I have cried over Blue and Pip, whom I loved despite their repeated attacks on The Egg Thief (Blue) and myself (Pip), Toots, the wild gosling abandoned by his flock, whom I managed to save his foot only to have him develop severe rye neck, which I was treating, with some success only for him to drown.

I don't officially know why, but I think it is because animals are innocents, anything "bad" that they do is out of survival and genetic instinct, whereas most humans make a conscious decision to be cruel and greedy.

 

[Ribh]

I'm delighted to be proven inaccurate.

Another time I might not be so lucky. I do occasionally listen to you... I read & re-read your article on understanding your rooster & asked what I thought were all the right questions before saying yes to him. It may partially be the breed; he is a booted bantam [ the majority of my flock are now bantams] & all the roosters from this tribe are sweeties. The breeder hasn't had a rogue one yet.