Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

In April 2021 I returned to the UK having spent the last ten years living with and studying various groups of chickens on a small holding In Catalonia Spain.

Some of you may have read some of my posts and seen pictures of what I call The Tribes, in my house and free ranging on the land. I’ve written a number of articles here on BYC based on my observations of these tribes and there is an as yet unpublished book that deals with the lives of these chickens and what I have learned from a decade of observing them and the experience of helping out with the care of free range chickens on my uncles farm in my youth.

I had decided even before leaving Catalonia that should I have to leave the tribes and my home what I would like to do was look after ex battery chickens and rescues given the opportunity. That opportunity arose in September of this year 2021.

A family member, knowing how much I miss the Tribes, mentioned that she though she knew where there were some chickens and one evening when out walking we visited the site. There was a rather old and partially illegible sign on the notice board at the entrance to the site asking for someone who would be prepared to help looking after the chickens. I contacted the person concerned and this thread is in part a record of the subsequent events.

The sign.

The Light Sussex rooster I was told is called Henry 11. Apparently he’s not over fond of people. One of the reasons he has such bad scaly leg mite is he wouldn’t have any of that capturing business and was prone to having a bit of a scrap in the event he got cornered. He’s quite a large chap and he’s got a lovely set of spurs on him.

So, job one was to get acquainted with Henry.

I went equipped with walnuts. Got into the run without getting mowed down by the hens trying to get out and stooped down to offer Henry half a walnut, sweeping the hens away with my other hand.

Henry took the walnut and he ate it. I gave him another and he ate that one as well. The third walnut he dropped for the hens and as some of you will know when a rooster drops food for his hens, his head usually lowers as well, and for a moment he isn’t concentrating on you. I grabbed him. There wasn’t much of a fuss. I held him for a few seconds and fed him another walnut in front of his hens, then gently put him down. Now if I call him he comes to me and every time I give him something just for him and enough after for him to drop for his hens. Unless I have food he is a bit wary of coming close, but that’s improving by the day.
Henry.

Faced with so many chickens in one hit so to speak, the first thing I had to do was try to identify who needed assistance the most. This hen as you can see in the picture was not at all well. When she first arrived she looked a lot worse apparently. More on this subject later.
I named her Lima.
She had feather mite, lice and was pooping worm segments.
Most of the lice around her eyes and ears I got with a cotton bud soaked in Permethrin.
I wormed her for seven days with Flubendazole (Flubenvet)
I wasn't sure if she had coccidiosis so I treated her for that while I was at it.
I thought the chances of her surviving very very slim.
Lima also has a Esophagus deformity. Apparently this is not that uncommon and is caused by getting crushed by other hens while their heads are pushed through the bars to the feeder. The smaller ones often get trampled in the crush to feed.

Much to my surprise she improved slowly and with the addition of extra food (tinned Haddock in her case, it's soft and oily and high in protein).
Not only is she trying to deal with moulting, she is also trying to replace feathers pulled out/damaged when she was in the battery cage.

She has a best friend, one of the Crested Legbars I've named Similie. They go everywhere together when they are out on the allotment run.

Much to my surprise and delight she seems to have decided I'm a good thing in her life and jumps onto my lap when I sit on the chair I have set up in the run.
Here she is having a nap on my lap.

I am happy to report she is doing much better than I had expected. She's a strange creature and goes everywhere now at a trot. She can even flap her wings enough to get a couple of feet off the ground.

I’ve been walking to the allotments with containers of feed, various medications and my camera packed in a small rucksack every day for almost three months now. For the first few days I went an hour or so before dusk. Doing this meant I could let the chickens out into the allotment run and be fairly confident I could get them back into the coop run with the help of dusk. It took me a few days to be confident that I had an accurate head count. I did ask C but they didn’t know exactly how many there were. The Red Sex Links I found difficult to tell from each other, the Golden Comets blend into the honey coloured mass which left the only positive identifications of Henry and his daughter Matilda.

Henry was already named and I named Matilda once I discovered she was Henry’s daughter.

There were two other grey hens, neither of which I knew the breed of and four Crested Cream Legbars and two black hens I later got told were Red Rocks.

In the three months I have seen precisely six adults who have allotments, three visitors and C will turn up when they can bringing feed and doing what they can in the limited time they have. Essentially I have an acre of land that nobody seems to use much on the edge of Bristol which is a major UK city. To buy such a place would cost close to a million pounds these days, possibly more in such a quiet location.

Four of the people who visit the allotments for an hour or so at the weekends mostly I’ve got to talk to a bit and from them I’ve learned a bit about the history of the place.

Roughly ten years ago Bristol City Council put forward plans to build houses on this plot. As there usually is, there was a bit of a local outcry against the scheme. A group of local residents proposed to the council that the field should be used for allotments/community farm. The council accepted the alternative scheme. Initially there were no livestock. My understanding is, the person who introduced them who died a couple of years ago already had a few chickens and these chickens got moved to their current location. I have no idea when the geese arrived.

So here’s a point of interest. This allotment/smallholding project wasn’t conceived and implemented by people who wanted to work the land and keep animals; it was started to prevent the council from building houses and one must assume in the participants eyes, ruining the neighbourhood.

From what I’ve been told the person who looked after the creatures here until they died spent a great deal of time at the allotments. Animals got fed, grass got cut, plots got dug etc. Once they died the responsibility fell in theory at least to the “community” that use the allotment plots and of course C who holds the smallholders licence.

What has happened in reality is C who has neither the money nor the time has been left to cope as best they can.

C works full time. By the time travel time to work and back is included C is unable to do anything at the allotment for on average ten hours a day and as I understand it, C works some Saturdays as well. In theory, the other participants in the scheme should pick up the slack but when that involves someone being there every day, rain or shine, warm or cold, inconvenient, or not to ensure the animals they’ve all agreed to keep, everyone has other more interesting and more comfortable things to do.

There is a lesson here for many who dream of the good life and growing their own food and attempting to be more self-sufficient. Farming/smallholding/self sufficiency particularly when there are other creatures involved is a lot of hard work, stress and commitment.

It seems such a shame that many people only discover this after they’ve gone and got whatever creatures they taken a passing fancy to.

A short disclaimer.

I love hens but above all I love roosters. I don’t care much if they like me back. I’ll work with that.
I’ve looked after lots of roosters and I’ve never had to kill one because of how he behaved towards me.
I’ve been flogged, spurred, pecked, had all sorts of stuff done to my boots, hands and clothing, most of which isn’t to be discussed in refined company.

An explanation of the TAX.
When By Bob created his Fluffy Butt Acres thread his intention was to talk about chickens. There are numerous threads on BYC where people can moan about their lives, their relatives, and talk about whatever other subject unrelated to chickens on.
Thread drift, like shite, happens. In order to minimize talk of such unimportnat matters unrelated to chickens By Bob introduced a tax system. If you posted on some other subject then you had to post a picture of a chicken as a penalty for thread trash. Bob being a warm and kind hearted man wouldn't just ban, or hurl abuse at the transgressions as I might (I'm getting better, honest)
I think it's a wonderful idea and it means that people can like a post even if they don't agree with the content because there is a lovely chicken in it.
It has by and large worked well. Bob's thread is imo one of the best on the site and I have kept it as my home thread on BYC for some time now.
So, to increase Bob's revenue I'm charging tax here. I'm purely a non profit concern and you will be happy to know that all tax collected goes towards Bob's thread eviction costs.

I've posted the first picture before but here it aids as a reminder.
Lima.

That hen over by the watering cans is Lima! and her bestie Similie of course. Lima just goes from strength to strength. It's a shame she no longer comes and jumps on my lap; she's far to busy being a chicken for all that boring human stuff. She goes everywhere at a trot which is so lovely. She seems full of energy (so she should given what she been fed over the past month) and has discovered she can hop over a place in the fence and Bucket Boy will come and get her when it's time to go to roost.

The first thing that struck me as we stood outside the run fence that night was there was a rather dirty Light Sussex rooster with a Light Sussex hen perched one side of him and a grey hen perched on the other side on a roost bar in the corner of the covered run area of the coop. The next thing that struck me was there was no door on the run area of the coop so the rooster and the two hens only predator protection was the outer run fence (I’ll write more about this fence further on).
At that time I had no idea that there were another 22 hens inside the coop itself!

I didn’t take any pictures that night but below is a picture of the rooster and one of his favourite hens on the roost bar settling down for the night.


I’ve kept a short written diary each day since I started looking after these chickens and taken quite a few photographs over the past three months. Many of these photographs I’ve posted on By Bob’s, Ribh’s and Mary Janet’s threads. My apologies for reposting them here.

A couple of days after speaking to the person who has the small holders licence that covers the keeping of the creatures and the allotment style plots, I had new keys cut for the padlock on the main run gate and was finally able to see better what it was I had taken on.

The philosophy/objectives.

There were 25 chickens when I started all kept in the run and coop you can see in the picture below.



From what I can gather, in the last two and half years at least, they may have got out once or twice a week for half an hour or so if that.

Vet care is not an option. Even if I had the money there are so few vets that really know much about chickens. There are a few locally that say they will treat them, but having spoken to a couple on the phone, they didn’t inspire me with confidence.

My view is getting these creatures out of the run for as many hours a day as I can spare and still do what I need to do in my life such as look for somewhere of my own to live is going to do them more good than a truckload of vets.

Next there is the matter of feeding. They were not getting anything like enough food. They're getting fed nowMore on this later.

There are ailments that one can fix and there are others one can’t. Many of these poor creatures are going to suffer from ascitis, cancers, various reproductive disorders and the long term effects of malnutrition and being kept in overcrowded cages. Many are feather eaters, a habit they pick up in the cages and while not as tightly housed as they were, the conditions they are now in are still cramped enough for feather pecking and eating to be a problem.

Most will know that a chicken can look perfectly healthy one day and die the next from a variety of complaints. They just hide the problems until they are at deaths door especially when it comes to cancers and internal organ problems. Just because a chicken is still walking around and eating does not mean it isn’t in pain and does not mean it is well.

I had a three day rule in Spain. If a chicken doesn’t eat commercial feed after three days of treatment once a problems diagnosed it gets euthanised. These poor creatures have suffered enough imo and the kindest thing I can do is try to ensure they don’t suffer any more by me, or anyone else playing doctor.

I have already implemented the three day rule and intend to continue doing so.



My belief is that being able to run around, dig, fly if they will, get away from the rest, explore where they can and eat a balanced and healthy diet will do them more good than just about anything else.

This is what I’m aiming for.

They will and are now getting treated for parasites, egg binding, slow crop, injuries, coccidiosis and beak problems in some cases. Ideally the coop wants burning and a new one or two building. That takes time and money. It may happen at some point.

What they will get whether they need it or not is my time and love.

BY Bob said:

I am very much looking forward to following alone. I know there will be heartbreak but there will be many victories no matter how small.

Click to expand...

I very much hope you wont be following alone Bob! At least a couple of other people following would be nice.