Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[kattabelly]

Mmmm, wild water!

This is where my own hygiene standards are slightly higher than the chickens'

 

[fuzzi]

Hello!
I've been lurking my way through the thread (I'm on page 1300 ish) admittedly mostly scanning through your diary posts @Shadrach or I'll never catch up, so I think I must owe some tax, and an introduction!

I'm looking after new-to-me chickens who came with the house we bought a couple of months ago. There were 5 hens, all 6-8 years old ish we think (the previous owner struggles with memory) underfed and rather neglected, but very free range, living on about half an acre of woodland & orchard.
2 went broody within days of us arriving, so we got them some hatching eggs and we now have three five week old chicks. Other than Scaly leg mite on one of them, they both seem healthy.
One is so flighty we can't get close enough to check her out properly, but she eats and drinks and does chickeny things so we assume she's ok! The other 2 died in the first few weeks we were here, but that's another story.

This is our current tribe - we think one of the chicks is a boy, so does he count for tax?View attachment 4236757

Welcome!

 

[fuzzi]

So did I and probably still do. I posted some time ago that I had sat down on the pavement at a bus stop and someone gave me a pound coin thinking I was a homeless person.

I don't recall, did you keep it?

 

[Perris]

They all keep returning to the extended run. Some of that has to do with it's the most likely place to get fed but there's something more than that going on.

If Mow and Sylph are following Glais' lead, he's probably cautious about extending his range - he's only been there a few days. And there must be lots of new-to-him forage to discover in every part he explores. He seems to have his head down to the ground in a lot of the photos at any rate

Sylph is either getting ready to moult, or she's sick.

Hopefully the former. But they're all potentially being exposed to new-to-them bugs, like kids at the start of school/university. Everyone comes home with runny noses (or worse) through the first term, picked up from their new classmates.

 

[Perris]

there are a few aspects of the small Nestera coop that verge on stupid; the pop door, the roosting bar arrangement and the lack of height of the front edge of the nest box for examples.

These features are evidently different from what you've experienced before, but they are not inherently bad. The pop door works for all my birds. Agreed the front edge of the nesting box is a bit too low, and I've lost the occasional egg being incubated to it before now (though never eggs just being laid; I think it is broody action rather than design issues there). And we don't have issues with the roosting bar arrangement; what's the problem for you?

 

[Perris]

Au revoir Fez, Janeka, Nybro and Puffin. I hope you'll all be very happy in your new home.

They are all lovely birds, and some might wonder why I let *them* go (rather than any others, especially some of the youngsters). Their new keepers wanted a roo, a broody and 2 hens, and left the choice to my discretion. The new keepers plan to let them have chicks.

These hens all have offspring already, so their genetics live on in my flock's gene pool. F is niece of Pu on the dam side, but otherwise the hens are unrelated, and none have Swedish Flower ancestry. Nybro was bought in as a SFH hatching egg so he's unrelated to them all. And, these hens are friends and usually hang out together (in particular, J and Pu are besties). So, when I weighed up all the options of who to cull from the flock, this was the set that emerged as the most suitable for the circumstances into which they will be moving. As with Glais, it remains to be seen how it works out; best laid plans of mice and men and all that.

 

[Shadrach]

Having looked into the price and availability of recycled plastic sheet and bar and found my rivet gun, I think I can build a small coop that does what I have found works for me and the chickens.
Something like this, with some minor alterations to enable an auto pop door would be ideal.

I built this in Catalonia, along with a number of other coops some of which are in my coop page article.