Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[ChaosMom]

Sometimes, after a rough day at the office, the only thing that will do is a good dust bath:

 

[Molpet]

if it was in a crate, what sort of predator had access? beak marks maybe?

Just an open ex large dog kennel/crate in the middle of the poultry yard. Turkey hens have been looking for that perfect spot. If it's a crate it's easy to lock and move when she goes broody.

I had it open and didn't see anybody by it until last Friday I found a DZ chicken eggs in it. At least 2 different chickens.

Predators are fox , coyote, raccoons and opossums

 

[BDutch]

Sometimes, after a rough day at the office, the only thing that will do is a good dust bath:
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What kind of office work do your chickens do?

 

[notabitail]

What kind of office work do your chickens do?

I have a "office" that I live in most of the day. It happens to have a door right to the free range pad. Mine claim they do office work. Mostly intimidation of me.

 

[Shadrach]

One obvious difference is the mature hens avoidance of it entirely, usually by remaining in the coop till the offending male gives up and wanders off.

I have been seeing that at breakfast since last year's cockerels started trying it on; Maria in particular waits in there till all the hullabaloo dies down, then comes and shouts at the back door to be let in for a private dining experience

Of course that doesn't work for the rest of the day, and typically I see one or other of two behaviours bringing the chase to an end: either squat and mate, usually accompanied by a shake afterwards, so she accepted him, or succeed in running to a preferred roo whereupon the chaser stops, in which case she rejected him.

I re-read Shad's Understanding your rooster article, which is always worthwhile, but it doesn't address the hen's behaviour or motivation in a chase (naturally enough, as the article is all about the roo!). Maybe you have some thoughts to add on it now @Shadrach ?

I do have some thoughts but they're too complicated to summerise in a post.
The most important point is while the chicken may have been bred into many different shapes and sizes, lay sometimes 300 more eggs than they used to, their brains and nature hasn't made the changes to go with the change in physical apects. There have been studies that report some changes in brain size and apparently changes to which sections of the brain are dominant, but they are very minor changes compared to the physical changes human interference has made to their bodies.

A further critical factor is how chickens are kept by backyard keepers in particular. This has a massive impact on how the chicken behaves. When one restricts the movement of any creature all sorts of behaviour problems emerge. We, humans recently discovered this with Covid. The fallout from how Covid was missmanaged seems to have had far reaching consequences to the human psyche which we are still trying to understand.
The natural instinct for a pullet that has recntly reached maturity is lay a clutch of maye six eggs and sit on them and hatch them. Even with the field chickens this is evidently still in their basic nature.

You may recal Tull and Henry trying to make a nest away from the coop shortly after she came into lay. The same has been true with Sylph, except her demonstration of wishing to sit is restricted to bouts in one of the coops nest boxes.

 

[Shadrach]

I’m going to have to start burying their feed. Clearly, it is preferable to excavate it:
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Foraging for food on the ground is what they are designed to do. Many farm and smallholding chicken keepers ground feed. Feeding them from some kind of tray or containor is probably really bad for them. They try to do the natural thing in many case, scratch the food out before eating it amd imitate foraging by picking up the spillage. The chicken is a forager, not a dinner plate eater and that foraging is part of what keeps them mentally and physically healthy. One cannot expect to restrict any of their major natural behaviours without a knock on effect in other areas.

 

[Shadrach]

Ahhh… my super-wary little skyhawk has succumbed to the lure of Trader Joe’s raw sliced almonds:
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Make the pieces smaller! Almonds are quite hard.

 

[ChaosMom]

What kind of office work do your chickens do?

They do extensive exploratory research on the invertebrate fauna living* in a micro-habitat of native soils derived from primarily metamorphic parent rock, featuring fertile clay soil mixed with schist and gneiss, covered with a good layer of humus.

* the invertebrate fauna is living until they find it.

 

[notabitail]

I love spring. Especially because it means the trees are green which makes the chickens happier.

It also means the idiots, especially the smart ones, can destroy what they can grab. Ladder was not placed on purpose for them to do that.

 

[Shadrach]

If it's a crate it's easy to lock and move when she goes broody.

This is why I suggest to people that they buy a pet carrier or three and leave them open, with nesting material in them. Big advantage for management of the sick and the broody in my experience. Not many of the tribes were overly stress by being in one of the pet carriers because they were something they had become used to from laying eggs in them.