Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Mother of Chaos]

A further cautionary picture to the text above of a young chap called Cillin not looking like he's having a good day after a weasel fastened it's teeth on Cillin's rear end inflicting wounds that required stitches and removing the majority of his tail feathers.
View attachment 4240584

Aww, poor baby. The blow to his dignity was probably as painful as the physical injuries.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

no, not really. It's a break in an ex-hedge, now reduced to a few horizontal poles that sprout to form a sort of green wall, at the top of a bank with a seasonal stream in the bottom of the drop on the far side. Talgarth is standing in a convenient gap used by the chickens (and me) to get down that bank into the stream bed (where they find a lot of arthropods).

There is an oak tree immediately on the left of this gap but out of shot; the large lump of timber in the background, pointing away behind him, is what's left of a branch that fell from it over 20 years ago, forming a natural bridge over the stream bed; that should give some idea of the tree's size. That old tree draws enormous volumes of water from the ground thereabouts in spring and summer, and of course takes most of the light, so it isn't possible to get a proper hedge growing again at ground level. It's great for snowdrops, daffodils, bluebells, and other spring flowers though!

Your chickens really do live in paradise.

 

[Perris]

Do you have any hens that you use for just eggs?

I use them all for eggs! It's a relatively tiny proportion that get set to hatch (less than 1% eggs laid this year, for example), and I don't have any complex plan to memorize. I just aim to set at least 1 egg laid by the hen who's sitting, and then 1 or 2 eggs as available from hens whose genes I want to perpetuate, either because they're great birds (all round), or because they've not yet had the opportunity to beget progeny.

 

[Perris]

Getting ready for his migration to Greece, I see .

btw, do you know the Diogenes the Cynic equivalent to my mushroom ID quip? Clue: Samothrace.

 

[kattabelly]

It's as frustrating as trying to teach chicks to walk up a coop ramp. When mum has given up I can recall some dreadful nights, soaked to the skin with peck marks on my hand from the irate mum who seems to think I'm trying to kill her chicks while I tried to ferret them out from underneath the coop.

I know lots of people talk about this but I honestly can't remember ever having problems either teaching chicks to use a ramp or steps myself or having to help a (chicken or duck) hen, other than with very young chicks or ducklings that had fallen out of a nest or gone wandering further than they were ready to and couldn't work out how to get back. Getting them to roost in a more sensible place than the one they've chosen, sure (I might trust older birds to make that decision but not when they're really young), but never how to get somewhere. Or maybe it's just been so stressful and traumatic that I've blanked it out

Tonight was just that after a brief experiment with roosting, my littles have gone back to the sleep heap for some reason even though they'll happily sleep on a roost outside in the wind & rain during the day. There's always a bit of screaming and scrabbling while they reorganise the initial double- or triple-decker pile-on My older chickens are going to roost about 35 minutes after sunset now too though, so the younger ones really weren't all that late.

 

[Perris]

It has been suggested that a predator, should it manage to breach the coop, would be unlikely to enter for fear of violent retribution for the damage by the hens, or even our magnificent roosters.

That's not quite what I was suggesting; I imagine the would-be predator would be attacked while trying to gain entry (think the typical hen door bully). I can't see my lot sitting back while something was nibbling away to try to open up an access point; they would be matching every nibble with a hard peck on the nose! And because the coops are so compact, they are going to be up close and personal to it (the vents are at head height when standing with head erect), not off in some dark distant corner.

 

[Perris]

I know lots of people talk about this but I honestly can't remember ever having problems either teaching chicks to use a ramp or steps myself or having to help a (chicken or duck) hen, other than with very young chicks or ducklings that had fallen out of a nest or gone wandering further than they were ready to and couldn't work out how to get back. Getting them to roost in a more sensible place than the one they've chosen, sure (I might trust older birds to make that decision but not when they're really young), but never how to get somewhere. Or maybe it's just been so stressful and traumatic that I've blanked it out

Tonight was just that after a brief experiment with roosting, my littles have gone back to the sleep heap for some reason even though they'll happily sleep on a roost outside in the wind & rain during the day. There's always a bit of screaming and scrabbling while they reorganise the initial double- or triple-decker pile-on My older chickens are going to roost about 35 minutes after sunset now too though, so the younger ones really weren't all that late.

lucky you! My competent broodies manage to get them all up and in however young, but others give up and I've intervened when it's looked like she's happy to just brood them overnight under the coop instead of in it

 

[Perris]

a weasel fastened it's teeth on Cillin's rear end inflicting wounds that required stitches

how did that attack end? did Cillin drive/shake it off? did you intervene? sounds horrendous.

 

[no fly zone]

In my experience - that is to say, the earliest I have been able to hear it - is a day before the first one breaks through the shell. I usually hear the broody cheeping very quietly to the chicks a day earlier; I guess they are replying but my hearing is not good enough to pick it up through the Nestera wall.

I've not heard that, though I have read about it too.

We were able to hear faint cheeps coming from the egg a few days before Skeksis hatched.

 

[Perris]

This is the Solway, not the Nestera, correct?

correct.