Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[SimpleJenn]

This is Quartz, a keeper. He's from that one rooster I liked last summer, so it's great to have his kid.
Kiddo wants to keep the stripy boy too, but I don't know how many we can keep.

 

[Shadrach]

Standard of evidence.
"I saw it with my own two eyes your honor."

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Standard of evidence.
"I saw it with my own two eyes your honor."

This hurt my brain! Although I can kinda see the shapes change. But what happened after they added all the additional shapes??

 

[Skyeknight]

Tax cause I am probably behind and if not then these are just lovely chicken pictures.

My rooster on his crowing stump. Phone camera is bad quality I know, I do have those chats a while back with recommendations saved for when I need a new phone.

In the meantime my pullet has continued to lay normal eggs and shell less eggs. She does still go inside on top of the table, which I think is her trying to lay an egg. And maybe they are just gone because of shell less and rolling off the table? Anyways she is still super active, healthy looking and acting!

Chicks are a month old in this picture. Now the question is can you spot the only rooster chick? Supposed to sexlinked with both fibro inhibitor and barring (also inhibits fibro), but his comb has darkened up quite a bit.

 

[HiEverybirdy]

I really don’t want to have a third group here.

Sorry you're dealing with this. I've had 2 males who hurt hens. The first time was the toughest. I culled him and haven't gotten over it emotionally (pains me to admit it, but it's true).

He's the bird in my avatar, Cogburn, a big Light Brahma. We were close. In some ways I can't forgive myself for culling him, but I also don't regret it. It saved the hens from living in pain and fear. They were being injured repeatedly and going into hiding when they needed to be foraging and dustbathing and filling their crops for the evening.

Unlike Big Red, Cogburn was also incredibly aggressive to humans which limited interim housing options. Euthanizing him was the kindest of the choices I felt I could make for him and the hens, even if it brutalized my spirit.

During the time we were trying valiantly to make it work with BurnBurn, we built him a compact, mobile coop, Cogburn's Clubhouse, so the hens could at least roost in peace. That meant we already had emergency space when the 2nd hen-aggressive rooster, Andre the Giant Chicken, tore a big chunk of skin off Miss Barbara's neck.

Andre ended up in Cogburn's Clubhouse, chatting up the hens through his movable net fence for 18 months before I finally finished raising pullets to hopefully integrate with him. They fell in love immediately, so DH and I begrudgingly added a more permanent third section to the chickenyard.

Andre did rip into Lil Nugs' neck once when she was about 6 mos old. I saw it happen, pulled him off of her and immediately closed him in his run so I could consider whether he would truly ever be safe around them.

Apparently he was considering it, too, because after I cautiously let him back out for supervised time with the girls over the next week, he'd turned back into a big sweetheart and never injured them again.

I think it helped that, though the girls met Andre while they were chicks to hopefully do some kind of imprinting, they weren't alone with him until they were fully feathered, self-assured pullets. That meant Lil Nugs responded to Andre with righteous indignation instead of cowering the way she might've if she'd always been abused.

Anyway, this was a long post even though I've left a lot out, but it felt germane to share. Best of luck.

Oldie-but-goodie videos of my social engineering with Andre and the Speckles.