Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Molpet]

I will admit the first time I read Shadrach saying tribe, pre covid, I was confused. But I kept reading and it made sense.

 

[Shadrach]

They didn't die from injuries.

My bad. I recall the picture I think of Chirk after being driven out of the tribe and he looked as if he had taken a beating. I didn't realise you euthanized him because of his sickness, I thought it had more to do with your other roosters not letting him back in.

First I saw Killay being chased by Hensol and thought a coup was in progress, and then realized that most of the senior roos were not themselves and it twigged that they were going into moult. Through most of the winter they've all done some chasing and being chased as they felt more or less stronger than the other and some apparently relished the opportunity and seized the moment to get their own back for some past perceived injustice. I notice Killay has been nicer to

You're not painting much of a picture that supports the harmonious tribe here Perris. It reads rather more like what I have described with the tribes; face saving scraps resulting in no or minimal injuries with a very occasional serious fight.
We obviously have a semantics problem here a bit like tribe and flock.

 

[Shadrach]

Communication is confounded when we use terms that mean different things to different people. The more baggage a term has, the more alternative readings it carries simultaneously. That leads to confusion not clarity.

Reminds me of a short discussion with a relative. We were discussing definitions during which I voiced some objections to the relative using scientific and mathematical words to describe various objects incorrectly. It goes on a lot from the common, mega, tons of, for examples. I think it was the misuse of the word stress that tipped me over the edge.
The now a slightly heated argument finish on the definition of a chair (it's amazing how petty such arguments get on all sides)
The relatives final definition ended up being a chair is anything I can sit on.

It sounds reasonable for a moment if it's said quickly enough
I stood there for a moment wondering what it's like to live in a world where almost anything I could think of was a chair...

 

[Shadrach]

Do domestic "flocks" only stay in the same space because that's where the food is? I wonder if chickens' social behavior changes based on distribution of resources, including but not limited to shelter, water, and food.

I think they must to survive.
It's interesting that in daytime ranging groups, despite have easy food if they want it, they will still forage; demonstrates how deeply embedded that natural behaviour is.

Consider food and other resources as currency in the chicken world for a moment.
Here's a silly question. If you provided similar but appropriate resources to a human do you think they would still go and look for a job?

 

[Molpet]

Here's a silly question. If you provided similar but appropriate resources to a human do you think they would still go and look for a job?

If it's the same food every day, even people without motivation want variety.
People complain about mana and said they were better off in Egypt.

 

[kattabelly]

Consider food and other resources as currency in the chicken world for a moment.
Here's a silly question. If you provided similar but appropriate resources to a human do you think they would still go and look for a job?

I think introducing the concept of currency is a needless complication here, when chickens have no equivalent. Resources are resources.

If you provided a human with a lifetime's supply of huel / ensure / soylent green would they still make the effort to somehow acquire or produce other foods?

(Not had anything to contribute but I've been enjoying reading the conversation, btw)

 

[RoyalChick]

Here's a silly question. If you provided similar but appropriate resources to a human do you think they would still go and look for a job?

Well some people work for free (volunteer), so at least for some people the answer must be yes.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

It really is interesting how words can carry connotations for some people, and not for others, and that they can be positive or negative, depending on the user.

I use "flock" as, I guess, a collective noun. So I have a flock of five chickens. This word feels completely neutral to me. I could say that I have a bunch of chickens, and it would have the same emotional association (= none), other than being ridiculously informal and possibly implying that I can't count to five.

I interpret @Shadrach 's use of "tribe" as meaning sub-flock, a subset of the set called flock. I suppose I could say that I have two tribes, the Bigs and the Littles, which might or might not end when the Littles finally start laying. In this setting, "tribe" also has a neutral feeling. Used elsewhere, it might feel negative, as it has so often been used by (generally) people of European descent to describe indigenous groups, often considered inferior. But it can also feel positive to me, in the sense of the multiple groups of American Indians/ Native Americans who have common ancestry, common history, sometimes still common language, and who have survived in the face of indescribable racism and genocide. We all carry connotations in our heads that influence our own word choices as well as how we interpret others' uses of these words.

By the way, in this enormous five-chicken flock, I have four breeds. The only "duplicates" are the Easter eggers, and my two look very, very similar (EEs are mutts, so this isn't a given.) Shadrach has found that his tribes tend to form around breeds, with birds of a feather triballing (har har) together, but I've seen no evidence of this (edit: in my back yard, I meant.) Among the Bigs, the Buff Orp and the EE are shadows of one another, and the two Littles, Speckled Sussex and EE, are equally inseparable. I've seen no evidence at all of Lil (Big EE) preferring the company of Willow (Little EE.) It's strictly by age and who hung with whom back at the farmer's.

It will be interesting to see if this changes once the Littles start laying, IF EVER THEY DO!

Edit to add a question that I have always had: if chickens are attracted to other birds of the same breeds because they look similar, how does an individual chicken know how it looks? Other than maybe its hindquarters or something else that it can actually see. Feather patterns? And if so, why would this tendency evolve? What would the reproductive benefit be? Golden retrievers aren't more attracted to other GRs, as best as I can tell. God knows my male GR would have happily mated with anything resembling a dog in heat if she would only hold still long enough.

 

[Mother of Chaos]

logical problem: how can it be accurate if the meaning of the term is not even agreed? I don't understand why you are so committed to the word, especially given your emphasis on the small size and the evident transience of the groups of chickens in question. Surely 'family' would fit better if want to emphasise familiarity.

Nor what your problem is with flock. Why don't you want to use it? What is everyone else in poultry studies using it getting wrong or missing?

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Perhaps you would like to link some of them. In the one I excerpted above more than 80% of the observations were of single birds. https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...rescued-chickens-thread.1502267/post-28985256
That paper and others suggest a lot of fluidity in the composition of groups as hens go broody and separate off to incubate and then raise their chicks. The groups are indeed small - tiny even - most of the time. And sometimes gather into groups of up to 25 in that paper and about 30 in other papers I've read on it.

If someone got glimpses of my flock during the day, if they were doing fieldwork peeping through the hedges, for example, they might well get the impression of groups of 2 or 3 here, 5 or 6 there, some on their own elsewhere. They don't even roost together, dispersed between 4 coops and 2 trees. But they are one flock who recognize each other as family, not strangers.

@Perris, how much space do your chickens have available? I know that they sometimes wander out of your property, but they seem to call your land their home.

 

[SimpleJenn]

The relatives final definition ended up being a chair is anything I can sit on.

It sounds reasonable for a moment if it's said quickly enough
I stood there for a moment wondering what it's like to live in a world where almost anything I could think of was a chair...

As someone with severe hip problems that mean I have to sit a lot, I do think of anything I can sit on as a chair.
Tax, Cowspots and Poppy. She has recently started laying and he is so pleased.