Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[BlindLemonChicken]

You just have to outrun whomever you're with.

Is it bad that this is why I always take my dog on hikes and call her bear-bait?

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I have been known to run out in the middle of the night, pajamas, flashlight and .45 in hand at the sound of any disturbances

I have an inkling that the location of our target shooting setup is the reason the very noisy bobcat that prowls around our property has not gone after my chickens. If I hear or see him I might use the spot I last saw him for target practice. This only works if you have the right background for it obviously but our bobcat has a set path along the bottom of our little mountain so it’s easy enough to make him jumpy for a few weeks.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Even wounds from rock salt could lead to death, if it didn't kill them right away, they could have a very painful drawn out death do to infection. :-( If you do have to shoot an animal, you have to make sure that you kill it, so they don't suffer cruelly. For me, it is always the last option.

Thanks, and I edited my post to direct people to yours.

Like I wrote, water pistols are my sole level of armament.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Is it bad that this is why I always take my dog on hikes and call her bear-bait?

If I can ever get strong enough to go hiking again, I'll definitely be the snackie!

 

[Mother of Chaos]

Is it bad that this is why I always take my dog on hikes and call her bear-bait?

Just to add my favorite bear advisory sign. Especially valuable for telling the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat:

 

[no fly zone]

I passed within two feet of a skunk this morning walking to work. It was eating out of a trash bag on the edge of the sidewalk. I sprinted past it before it could react.

 

[RoyalChick]

Just to add my favorite bear advisory sign. Especially valuable for telling the difference between black bear and grizzly bear scat:

View attachment 4225938

Brilliant!

 

[kattabelly]

You want me to squat for who?!
View attachment 4222122

Plenty of cockerels to go around and somehow she's decided that I'm the best option

Looking no less demented but quite a bit redder, less than a week later (took this yesterday)

She's still squatting for me Had to give her back a stroke the other day before she'd stand up, do the shake and get out from under my feet.

Really sorry to everyone who's had losses recently. I feel lucky living here with far less predator pressure than even the UK mainland. I think folk here probably lose more chickens to vehicles than predation.

 

[Vulpes vulpes]

Thank you Perris for writing your experiences again. Your conclusion definitely makes sense to me. At the same time, I find it highly unlikely that a “beware” crow from a red junglefowl rooster would mean much to many predators found in the same jungles; the crow definitely has multiple purposes.

The most LF males we’ve had here was this spring and early summer, Big Red, his Grandson Elrond, and the Tsouloufati boy.
I don’t know if I can do more than two, ever, as the neighbours have expressed their dislike towards crowing multiple times, and many are lifelong family friends.

Despite probably never trying it, I would really like to see how a whole group of roosters would act. If it works (even sometimes), it would be a really cool and very natural, more so than electric fencing and a guard dog.

May I ask how old the cockerels there are right now? Standard crowing age for LFs here is 5-7 months. I haven’t seen the number shift much, if anything, they start younger when other males are present

I recently saw someone offer an explanation on why roosters crow regardless of their place in the hierarchy, and why crowing increases with the density of roosters. They argued that, since the territories of junglefowl overlap, the call and response of crowing is a way for them to keep track of where everyone is. This would allow groups to avoid running into each other, thus preventing conflict. It might explain why even less dominant roosters will call unprompted, because it behooves them to hear that response and know where the doms are. I would be interested to see whether henless "rogue" roosters crow less frequently, since it might benefit them to go unnoticed so that they can sneakily mate with someone else's hens

 

[Vulpes vulpes]

I passed within two feet of a skunk this morning walking to work. It was eating out of a trash bag on the edge of the sidewalk. I sprinted past it before it could react.

One time me and my partner were hiking in the woods in a state park. We decided to take a break on a park bench. It was getting towards dusk, and after we'd been sitting for a few minutes, a skunk appeared from the shadows and sauntered on past us, without a care in the world. It must've come within a few feet of us. We were frozen in shock, but it totally ignored us