Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

How are you now vis-à-vis the shingles virus @Shadrach ?

I've still got it. It's completely nerfed my sleeping which is why I'm posting on BYC at stupid o'clock in the small hours. If you get a choice between Covid or shingles, take the covid every time.

 

[ChaosMom]

I have. If this was my own land I might but the plot size is small and I'll enjoy scrabbling around on my hands and knees pretending to forage with the chickens.
It's all about making as good an environment for the chickens now. I've done a veg plot for three years now. It's okay I suppose but I'm not a gardener and to make veg growing worthwhile one needs to be able to preserve the produce. I can't really do that and most of what I've grown in the past gets got given away.

I swear by this thing. Flip it over, and you also have a sitting bench.

Mine is beat to hell and doesn't look much like the picture. (Same for me, in fact.) But it works!

 

[RoyalChick]

I've still got it. It's completely nerfed my sleeping which is why I'm posting on BYC at stupid o'clock in the small hours. If you get a choice between Covid or shingles, take the covid every time.

Fortunately that isn’t the choice!

 

[RoyalChick]

I swear by this thing. Flip it over, and you also have a sitting bench.

Mine is beat to hell and doesn't look much like the picture. (Same for me, in fact.) But it works!

View attachment 4100140

I had one of those but I ended up giving it away because I was always leaving it behind!

 

[Perris]

I've still got it. It's completely nerfed my sleeping which is why I'm posting on BYC at stupid o'clock in the small hours. If you get a choice between Covid or shingles, take the covid every time.

that sounds horrid. Does anything work to relieve the pain?

I sometimes find I'm overlapping with you posting in the wee small hours, but that's because sometimes I wake up very early for no apparent reason , and then feel like I have put in a full day by 11am and really need a few hours' nap to survive till anything remotely like a proper bedtime

Tax: the chicks are 2 weeks old today. They are still allowed not only to eat with the grown-ups, but even to walk right through the middle of dinner (None of these hens are their broody btw, and I am convinced that they really do not need her protection, although she would surely disagree, and sooner or later an adult will get fed up with them - when they exit the cute phase, like toddlers do - and then they will be banished to the bottom of the pecking order. Meanwhile, mealtimes are easy.)

 

[ChaosMom]

This is the link for the basic bench that I pictured above: https://www.gardeners.com/buy/garden-kneelers/40-008.html

Gardener's Supply is a nice resource for US gardeners, although a lot of their stuff is ridiculously pricey. I also like their pound-in border edging (keeps daylilies under control, although obv not chickens) https://www.gardeners.com/buy/pound-in-edging/8609519.html

 

[fluffycrow]

Might have spoken too soon on the broody front. During midday today I realised that I had heard the head hen of the Tsouloufati cluck when they were being let out in the morning. Come bedtime, sure enough, she’s clucking. This is the first time she’s done this. Not sure how to interpret it. Possibly more like mourning her beloved partner? Given her age and lack of brooding history, I’m not sure if it could be regarded as pre-broody behaviour or not

 

[Shadrach]

Possibly more like mourning her beloved partner?

Sounds similar to Fret's behaviour since Henry's death as I've written in earlier posts. Fret chatters a lot when I'm there.

 

[Shadrach]

Two and a half hours today. Warmish and it stayed dry.
Did a little work but mostly watched the hens.

 

[Perris]

Might have spoken too soon on the broody front. During midday today I realised that I had heard the head hen of the Tsouloufati cluck when they were being let out in the morning. Come bedtime, sure enough, she’s clucking. This is the first time she’s done this. Not sure how to interpret it. Possibly more like mourning her beloved partner? Given her age and lack of brooding history, I’m not sure if it could be regarded as pre-broody behaviour or not

I have one who does this, and when it started I thought she was going broody. But we are now some months down the road, she still performs a broody-like cluck-clucking on emergence from the coop and at sundry other times during the day (especially mealtimes), but she hasn't actually gone broody, despite 3 other hens around her having done so, and indeed a brood of chicks cheeping all over the place. And she did go proper broody last year and raised chicks, so she knows what's involved. Upshot: I do not know how to interpret her broody-type clucking either