Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

I had a lidded ceramic cake tin I found in a junk shop years ago. It got used for storing everything except cake for years and now I could do with a cake tin I can't find anything I like.

 

[Shadrach]

I restarted my kefir culture a few days ago and the chickens are loving it.
They seem to have hollowed out poor Mr. Pumpkinhead (the kefir soaked feed is in a bowl to the side of the pumpkin).
I am glad Pooh is getting stuck in - she is still clinging to her one tail feather!
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I've been meaning to try kefir out on the field chickens.

 

[kattabelly]

It got used for storing everything except cake for years

I usually soak the fruit in a thoroughly scrubbed-out garden trug when I'm making multiple xmas cakes, and I sometimes make other cakes in the silicone "tins" that are mostly used as chicken feeders

 

[RoyalChick]

I've been meaning to try kefir out on the field chickens.

Mine have always loved it.
If I give it to them in a bowl they get it everywhere, so using it to make mash is a bit cleaner.
When it is hot I freeze kitchen scraps in pots of kefir. It doesn’t freeze like ice, more like ice-cream and the chickens grab great chunks of it with great enthusiasm.
Making it is honestly embarrassingly easy and when your colony gets too big the chickens will eat the spare grains too.

 

[notabitail]

I've read that chickens and many other creatures give yellow and black stripped insects a wide berth without having to experience getting stung.
I've also read the birds that do eat bees have a different type of feathering that the bee sting can't penetrate.

I watched a young, small, Empress Josephine grab a wasp the size of her head, smack it on the ground once, and swallow the thing whole.

 

[Shadrach]

Two and a half hours, dry with some sunshine, 14C ish.
We all had a couple of hours in the field. Mow and Sylph did do some foraging.

Glais acting the fool again.

 

[BDutch]

The chicks didn't learn the alert; they knew it.

Maybe the alert for predators is instinctive, comparable with people screaming of fear (for a spider or a mouse ).

 

[Perris]

Maybe the alert for predators is instinctive, comparable with people screaming of fear (for a spider or a mouse ).

But people screaming in fear of a spider or mouse is not instinctive behaviour; a fair amount is learned. See e.g. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6716607/

 

[Molpet]

Someone on here said when they played my video with a mink screaming their chickens were terrified. They don't have mink there.

 

[RoyalChick]

Maybe the alert for predators is instinctive, comparable with people screaming of fear (for a spider or a mouse ).

Screaming for spiders or mice is definitely not instinctive behavior!
I grew up learning spiders were our friends (eat insects) and to kill one was unlucky.
Mice are cute. Unfortunately as a home owner they are nasty dirty creatures!
Incidentally cats don’t seem to have the innate fear of orange and black striped insects and do get stung. None of mine have been stung twice, so they do learn.