Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Mother of Chaos]

There's a problem here. People are encouraged on this site and others to keep chickens. One of the so called attractions is chickens make great pets.
The truth is they don't. There are some that take to humans reasonably easily; bad move if one thinks about given we are their greatest predators and abusers, but most I've known don't really like being handled and petted. One can "tame" a chicken into a pet, but they are rarely pets to start with.

Chickens fall into that grey area between pets and livestock but the chicken doesn't know this. What I believe one has with chickens is livestock, as in they are not necessarily tame. In my experience farms and smallholdings had designated people responsible for the different livestock. The creatures get to know these people and the keepers get to know their animals. I've read many posts here where it's all gone West mainly because the whole chicken keeping bit is treated as fun and perhaps some education for the whole family. That's screaming toddlers, hysterical aunts, I'm gonna show them whose boss guests, etc, and the poor rooster, who is trying to do the job, or at least part of it the keeper got him for gets the blame for protecting his hens. It doesn't matter if you're the one that brings food and provides housing, the cockerel/rooster doesn't care.
It takes time to gain any creatures trust, and patience and sometimes it all goes horribly wrong.

Livestock, it's not a description that only designates the creature as food; it means they are not tame and they need to be treated with a great deal of respect because most have the potential to do you harm.

My view is people should know this before they get chickens. There would be lot less disasters if people just accepted this rather than the cuddly pet that makes you breakfast image.

Unfortunately livestock in ones back garden doesn't have quite the same promotional appeal as fluffy butt egg machines. NOTE. Roosters do not make you breakfast although they may wake you up for it.

So, the whole backyard chicken keeping, whatever one wants to call it, is based on half the species, or close to, and that is hens. It's no wonder there are problems when the other half of the species joins in.

There's one of the topics @Perris.

I read a post yesterday that used the term “petstock.” I’m not sure that ours are even that.

Other than begging for food (yes, they have plenty) whenever we appear, they completely ignore us. And I’m fine with that. I handle them enough to where they’re somewhat resigned to it, so that I can do so in an emergency.

Otherwise, they’re there for eggs and entertainment. I don’t know why such single-minded animals are so fascinating, but they are. And as I daily see more and more evidence of my country being destroyed by malicious and greedy SOB’s, I increasingly rely on a peaceful spell on the back deck at the end of a too-long day, watching chickens chickening.

 

[Shadrach]

Wet, windy and blustery. No one was interested in leaving the shelter of the coop extension. I started to feed them outside and another squall blew up and they retreated to the coop. I took the food in.
I spent an hour and a half at the field.

Chicken dinner! Organic, free range but unfortunately still a meat bird. I think I may have found a place I can get dual purpose chicken to eat. I much prefer the taste. Camr out well if a bit on the calorific side; the recipe requires 125g of double cream and 16g of Parmesan cheese.
I offset the naughty stuff with grilled asparagus and green olives.
No I don't know what I'm doing cooking dinner after midnight.

 

[kattabelly]

There's a problem here. People are encouraged on this site and others to keep chickens. One of the so called attractions is chickens make great pets.
The truth is they don't. There are some that take to humans reasonably easily; bad move if one thinks about given we are their greatest predators and abusers, but most I've known don't really like being handled and petted. One can "tame" a chicken into a pet, but they are rarely pets to start with.

Chickens fall into that grey area between pets and livestock but the chicken doesn't know this. What I believe one has with chickens is livestock, as in they are not necessarily tame. In my experience farms and smallholdings had designated people responsible for the different livestock. The creatures get to know these people and the keepers get to know their animals. I've read many posts here where it's all gone West mainly because the whole chicken keeping bit is treated as fun and perhaps some education for the whole family. That's screaming toddlers, hysterical aunts, I'm gonna show them whose boss guests, etc, and the poor rooster, who is trying to do the job, or at least part of it the keeper got him for gets the blame for protecting his hens. It doesn't matter if you're the one that brings food and provides housing, the cockerel/rooster doesn't care.
It takes time to gain any creatures trust, and patience and sometimes it all goes horribly wrong.

Livestock, it's not a description that only designates the creature as food; it means they are not tame and they need to be treated with a great deal of respect because most have the potential to do you harm.

My view is people should know this before they get chickens. There would be lot less disasters if people just accepted this rather than the cuddly pet that makes you breakfast image.

Unfortunately livestock in ones back garden doesn't have quite the same promotional appeal as fluffy butt egg machines. NOTE. Roosters do not make you breakfast although they may wake you up for it.

So, the whole backyard chicken keeping, whatever one wants to call it, is based on half the species, or close to, and that is hens. It's no wonder there are problems when the other half of the species joins in.

There's one of the topics @Perris.

I don't, in seriousness, disagree with any of this. It did make me laugh a little bit though when I think about the growing number of cuddly pet chickens I've somehow ended up with, or the cows that lived in what was effectively my back garden and were mostly dangerous if they disagreed about whose turn it was to have their hair combed or thought you weren't scratching them with enough enthusiasm, or a bull at another place I did some work who also required daily scritches, or the tup that used to follow me around sooking on my oilskins even though he'd never been a caddy lamb, or the pigs that would hurl themselves down at your feet to demand belly rubs with probably enough force to snap an ankle if you weren't ready for them...

(I've also been bitten, butted, shoved, scratched, kicked, flogged, charged, warned or admonished with all kinds of noises and body language. Those were all either accidents/misunderstandings or completely understandable, natural and often even desirable behaviour though. Never held it against the animals involved apart from the Muscovy ducks)

 

[kcan2]

So, the whole backyard chicken keeping, whatever one wants to call it, is based on half the species, or close to, and that is hens. It's no wonder there are problems when the other half of the species joins in.

There's one of the topics @Perris.

Really enjoyed this topic coverage, looking forward to more!

Taxy tax: The most personable and friendliest of the neighbors inquiring at the back door, “might you have any more raisins in there?”

 

[Mother of Chaos]

That was Fret. She sat and hatched twice. Given the time it took her to recover from her leg/tendon strain I was reluctant to let her sit again.

Not the way Mow and Sylph have been acting recently, with good reason I might add. The two times I saw Glais suggest sex this afternoon he got abuse hurled at him. Either could go broody if the trait is genetically passed on. Fret, their mother went broody late in life, after I arrived so I'm not counting on a teenage mums at the moment.

Poor Fret, that was such a shock.

 

[Perris]

There's a problem here. People are encouraged on this site and others to keep chickens. One of the so called attractions is chickens make great pets.
The truth is they don't. There are some that take to humans reasonably easily; bad move if one thinks about given we are their greatest predators and abusers, but most I've known don't really like being handled and petted. One can "tame" a chicken into a pet, but they are rarely pets to start with.

Chickens fall into that grey area between pets and livestock but the chicken doesn't know this. What I believe one has with chickens is livestock, as in they are not necessarily tame. In my experience farms and smallholdings had designated people responsible for the different livestock. The creatures get to know these people and the keepers get to know their animals. I've read many posts here where it's all gone West mainly because the whole chicken keeping bit is treated as fun and perhaps some education for the whole family. That's screaming toddlers, hysterical aunts, I'm gonna show them whose boss guests, etc, and the poor rooster, who is trying to do the job, or at least part of it the keeper got him for gets the blame for protecting his hens. It doesn't matter if you're the one that brings food and provides housing, the cockerel/rooster doesn't care.
It takes time to gain any creatures trust, and patience and sometimes it all goes horribly wrong.

Livestock, it's not a description that only designates the creature as food; it means they are not tame and they need to be treated with a great deal of respect because most have the potential to do you harm.

My view is people should know this before they get chickens. There would be lot less disasters if people just accepted this rather than the cuddly pet that makes you breakfast image.

Unfortunately livestock in ones back garden doesn't have quite the same promotional appeal as fluffy butt egg machines. NOTE. Roosters do not make you breakfast although they may wake you up for it.

So, the whole backyard chicken keeping, whatever one wants to call it, is based on half the species, or close to, and that is hens. It's no wonder there are problems when the other half of the species joins in.

There's one of the topics @Perris.

To clarify before chipping in on this: this is the topic

People are encouraged on this site and others to keep chickens. One of the so called attractions is chickens make great pets.
The truth is they don't. There are some that take to humans reasonably easily; bad move if one thinks about given we are their greatest predators and abusers, but most I've known don't really like being handled and petted.

rather than roosters, aggressive or otherwise?

 

[Skyeknight]

My view is people should know this before they get chickens. There would be lot less disasters if people just accepted this rather than the cuddly pet that makes you breakfast image.

The amount of threads I see that are like "we got this breed/species, how do we take care of them?" is baffling to me. Why aren't you researching how to take care of an animal before you get it. This something I also did when I got ducks as a teenager, but for the CX pullets and other breeds I was researching for months beforehand.

or a bull at another place I did some work who also required daily scritches,

May I ask which breed the bull was? I have heard meat breed bills are way friendlier than diary breed bulls. We have had a Holstein bull at one point and he was pretty dangerous. Not saying that bulls are always dangerous, but compared to a chicken they can kill you way easier.

 

[kattabelly]

May I ask which breed the bull was? I have heard meat breed bills are way friendlier than diary breed bulls. We have had a Holstein bull at one point and he was pretty dangerous. Not saying that bulls are always dangerous, but compared to a chicken they can kill you way easier.

Sussex. They're lovely creatures. Traditionally they were used as draught animals before heavy horses became more popular - and even after that, as oxen are much better suited to working in the thick clay soil found in parts of Sussex - so they were bred to be easy to work with. Not saying that means they aren't at all dangerous though! The size of them alone means they can easily do a lot of damage without even meaning to.

I know you can't generalise too much across an entire breed but one person I used to do some cow work for was a little bit prejudiced against some of the big continental beef breeds like Limousins and Charolais, and I think I've kind of picked that up myself through a combination of hearing stories and not having any experience working with them myself. (Not sure how true it is but I have heard that supposedly there was a particular line of Lims in the UK a good while back that were completely mad, and that's why they have such a bad reputation over here.)

I like working with cows because (in my experience) if they don't want to do something they'll usually just stand and refuse to move. Sheep and chickens are more like:

I've never done any dairy work though.

 

[fluffycrow]

Congratulations @HiEverybirdy and Stilton on getting featured on the BYC calendar!

If there is one person (and chicken) who truly deserve it, it’s you with your incredible photos (the best chicken photos I’ve seen), and your “muse” Stilton. We all love reading his stories, and seeing all his flashy colours. Congratulations!

 

[Perris]

I know you can't generalise too much across an entire breed but one person I used to do some cow work for was a little bit prejudiced against some of the big continental beef breeds like Limousins and Charolais, and I think I've kind of picked that up myself through a combination of hearing stories and not having any experience working with them myself. (Not sure how true it is but I have heard that supposedly there was a particular line of Lims in the UK a good while back that were completely mad, and that's why they have such a bad reputation over here.)

modern farming methods can reduce a 'breed' effectively to one, two or just a few individuals in the male line. See e.g. https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...re-descended-from-just-2-bulls-thats-not-good