Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[fuzzi]

Did you know that chicks bounce?

 

[Skyeknight]

I let her sit on eggs. I candled them at 7 days and 10 days and they looked weird (to my newbie eyes) so I chucked (viable!!!!) eggs and she broke soon after.

This broke my heart to read. I candle 1 time halfway through brooding, simply to get rid of non developed eggs to make sure outer eggs don't get too cold. Honestly I don't understand how this could happen, as either they are completely empty and lit up or they aren't and you leave them alone (even if you think they might be non viable). My apologies since that probably sounds rude and I don't mean it that way.

(It's also confusing when the duration of "broodiness" includes the chick-rearing stage, which is completely appropriate, of course.)

I see these 2 as completely different things. The first one is her basically them being pregnant the other is being a mom. Both of them involve trying to keep either eggs or chicks warm, but is very different in all other parts in my eyes.

carried a captured young bunny to the deck.

One of the cats here also carried a baby hare, but that one was already dead.

The cat couldn't follow, and the chickens went crazy chasing (also incredibly incompetent hunters.)

During my childhood we used to keep chickens and rabbits together in a run. They tended to avoid the rabbits.

 

[thistlewick]

This broke my heart to read. I candle 1 time halfway through brooding, simply to get rid of non developed eggs to make sure outer eggs don't get too cold. Honestly I don't understand how this could happen, as either they are completely empty and lit up or they aren't and you leave them alone (even if you think they might be non viable). My apologies since that probably sounds rude and I don't mean it that way.

I see these 2 as completely different things. The first one is her basically them being pregnant the other is being a mom. Both of them involve trying to keep either eggs or chicks warm, but is very different in all other parts in my eyes.

One of the cats here also carried a baby hare, but that one was already dead.

During my childhood we used to keep chickens and rabbits together in a run. They tended to avoid the rabbits.

I didn't take it that way, no worries here heck omg you should read the incubator forums here, much stupider crap goes on than that!

There was 3 eggs and when I candled them, they looked bizarre -- HALF dark, SIDE WAYS. So if you held the egg horizontally, it was dark like the egg was half full from the bottom.

It was STRANGE but, but, I learned (on reddit, not on here) that is still viable -- I have since candled that during some incubator candling and left it alone and it developed into a healthy chick.

But I posted that problem here and people here told me it was weird and not at all normal.

Goes to show that animal husbandry is something that we're constantly still learning and need to disseminate!

 

[Skyeknight]

HALF dark, SIDE WAYS. So if you held the egg horizontally, it was dark like the egg was half full from the bottom.

It is a bit of interesting way to develop. I do see diagonal development quite a bit, so wouldn't be much of stretch for one to develop horizontally. I just celebrate a little everytime they cast "shadows".

But I posted that problem here and people here told me it was weird and not at all normal.

I am so sorry to hear this! This site may be way better than Facebook groups, but yeah guess there is still a lot of misinformation going around...

 

[SimpleJenn]

I have had a few experiences of broody hens. Last year Samara and Morinth co-brooded and mothered 7 chicks, very well in my opinion.

Since I had to start over again this year, I told my pullets that if they went broody at a time I was hatching, they could have eggs. NavyBeans took me up on the offer and now she's sitting on six in a seperate coop (I couldn't convince her to leave the "most special" nest and the other girls were having fits.)
I candled her eggs and they are all doing great. She's a very sweet broody, and at 5 months old she seems to just "get it." She's 1/4 silkie so that seems to be a strong factor in my experience, my hens last year were both part silkie too.

The sweetheart getting ready to tuck her eggs back in after I candled them and gave her a treat.

 

[RoyalChick]

I was thinking more of a sort of meta study (trawling the existing posts and threads) rather than just basing it on my own flock.

And I don't handle them unless they're too ill to object, so we'd be off to an exceptionally difficult start with weighing! I don't think weight is a great indicator of health anyway.

FWIW Tassels is exceptionally easy to weigh when she is broody.
I use a digital kitchen scale. When I take her off the nest and place her on the scale platform she settles down like she is trying to hatch out little kitchen scales. The only issue is she fluffs herself up so much that her feathers obscure the reading.

 

[MrsNorthie]

I could see them catching a skink that wandered into the run, but does anyone ever see them running down and killing a rabbit?

Ours seem to ignore or tolerate any creatures that venture into their territory unless it is a predator or a tasty bug. They don't mind the wild geese, or birds that pop in and right now, they are hosting a mated pair of wild mallard ducks that seem to feel safe in their run.

 

[RoyalChick]

on the handful of occasions I've seen a rabbit in the garden here, the chickens have completely ignored it.

Mine don’t ignore, but they accept.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Great; it appears that my chickens have imprinted on my cat...

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Mine don’t ignore, but they accept.
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I'm so amazed at the depth and richness of your pasturage. How much land do you have available for them to forage? Do you have to redistribute it occasionally to let it recover while they work over a different site? (fencing, etc.)