Chickens

[Teri]

Hi, I see there are quite a few chicken enthusiasts here, so I wonder if anyone can help... my dad recently bought an "eglu", and he got 3 ex battery hens to go with it, and then went back the next day to collect another, trouble is, one of the first 3 now keeps attacking the new one, and drawing blood(odd, since she's the one with the most of her beak removed at the farm). My dad has now separated them into pairs in different areas of the garden during the day, and just has themsleeping together at night, for warmth, but is there any way to cure this problem?

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

What is the general health/conditions of the hens like at the moment?

 

[Teri]

What is the general health/conditions of the hens like at the moment?

well, not good really, because they've just come out of a battery farm, so they're only starting to grow feathers now. but eating well, and seem quite happy scratching about!

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Chickens can sometimes pick on each other if there are chickens who are in a bad condition, they sometimes try to evict the sick ones from the group by bulling them or simply bullying them because they are weak and force them to the bottom of the pecking order.
My main advice would be to concentrate on getting them back to health, the bully one may veiw the other hens differently once they are all back in good shape. Check for any parasites and bath any wounds they have in slightly salty warm water with a sponge to help prevent them from becomming infected and to help incourage the healing process. Check to see their claws aren't too long (battery chickens can sometimes can really overgrown claws from standing in their cages 24/7) and that they don't have any walking difficulties. Try to make their environment as interesting as posible as chickens are intelligent birds which do well in environments which encourage them to explore and do things .
If their feather loss is really bad, you might want to keep them indoors in a warm place (make sure there are no drafty areas and that the floor of their shelter is dry and covered with something like sawdust or wood shavings or fresh hay or straw etc) before you let them outside (unless the weather is really pleasent) until they have enough feathers to keep sufficiently warm on their own. The warmer they are, the easier it will be for them to get back into good shape as they'll be able to store more body fats better instead of shivering them away all the time.
What sorts of foods are you feeding them? Chickens are omnivores and a varied diet is best, they'll eat a suprisingly array of foods. Soggy dog biscuts, porridge, bannana's, sliced tomato's, non-poulty dog meat food, bread soaked in milk and of course wheat etc were all favorites of my chickens when i used to keep them .
Soft hay (not straw) is the best bedding material for the hens to nest in in my experience, the hens may prefer to choose to nest on the ground or in nest boxs off the ground- it depends on the individual hen really, so give them some choice when it comes to nesting area's .

 

[Teri]

That's fantastic. They're my dad's hens, I've printed this off for him. Thank u!!

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

That's fantastic. They're my dad's hens, I've printed this off for him. Thank u!!

Glad to help !

During the summer its best to have a sandy area thats mostly in the sun all day in their pen as chickens like to dust bath during hot sunny weather- its good for them as dusting helps dislodge parasites from under their feathers so the chickens can get rid of them, they also seem to thoroughly enjoy it.
You should change the bedding in their house every 3-6months depending on how quickly it gets dirty and dusty (as stuff like straw disentegrates into dust over time from dust mites and things) to help cut down on parasites like flea's living in the bedding. The chickens shouldn't have a problem with things like flea's, but they'll build up in the bedding over time, but it'll make things easier especially for you so you don't get bitten. Cleaning out and replacing the bedding every 3-6months should help prevent parasites like these .
If you have a rooster with your hens who is young and fit and the hens aren't too old and/or knackered out, you'll definately get hens during the summer (well, anytime from early spring to late autum really) trying to sit on their eggs and hatch them out. Rules with egg collecting;
a. Never take an egg directly out from under a hen- it upsets them and discourages them from laying in the same place anytime soon. You could also risk taking eggs from a nest site which a hen is trying to hatch chicks from.
b. Never take warm eggs- you might take eggs which a hen is trying to hatch chicks out of. Hens sitting on eggs trying to hatch chicks out of them sit pretty much 24/7 on their eggs, but they will go out of the nest for a little while everyday to eat and drink but almost always return before the eggs go cold. So you shouldn't take warm eggs just in case the hen is going to return to them. If you don't want chicks the simplest solution is to simply not keep a rooster with them.

So basically you should only take cold and unguarded eggs- eggs should be cold within a few hours of been laid depending on various factors like room temperature and thickness of bedding in nest box etc.

Hens usually need to sit on the eggs for at least a month before any hatch out. Its rare for all the eggs to hatch out- some may not have been fertilised, while others may have got too cold at some point during the incubation etc. Ones with live chicks in them though may not always successfully hatch- sometimes the chick is sometimes just too weak to get all the way out and dies from exhustion or suffocation. If the chick is halfway out of the egg, sometimes you can help them out by removing a couple of sections of the shell to make it easier for them, but never do this if the chick had only just started to break the shell- if its too weak to get past this on its own, it'll most likely be too weak to survive anyway so its better to just leave it to struggle the first few main stages on its own.
The other thing is that the eggs may hatch over many days, the hen will need to go out with the first born chicks to feed them sooner or later and leave any unhatched chicks to die in their eggs as once she has the bulk of the chicks have hatched she is unlikely to return to the nest as regularly as she would if none of them have hatched yet. You can sometimes keep her on the nest for longer with her chicks by providing her with food right next to the nest so she is not as tempted to leave it so early.
Chicks are very cute and loveable little things, but they do die from time to time- the most common cause of death is when hens with chicks attack other hens chicks or when last born chicks (or chicks which were very weak from hatcing) simply cannot keep up with the others. But if you look after them well and keep a close eye on them, most if not all should survive .

Its good if you gently speak to the hen while she is incubating her eggs (as long as she doesn't find you threatening and acts defensive) as the way chicks know their mum is by communicating with her while they are still in their eggs (sometimes you'll see the hen communicating with the chicks too- if you listen to an egg which is nearing the end of its incubation sometimes you hear the chick inside cheeping away). If the chicks hear your voice while they are in their eggs they'll be a lot tamer towards you when they hatch- i know this is true too from experience as well .

Usually in chicks the males outweigh the females in numbers, usually there is 60%males and 40% females. Because the minimum recommended number of females per male is 3-4, and you don't want the chickens to inbreed too much, you will need to do something with all the males sooner or later as they mature.
We used to kill and eat our excess male chickens to prevent them from inbreeding with the hens and generally out-numberring them, other times we rehomed them whenever we could. You can also sell them at animal markets, but most sold at such markets end up on the plate eventually anyway so you might as well put them down yourself and eat them rather than sell them when you cannot find homes for them (unless of course you are vegetarian or something). I would only recommend this though if you know how to humanely and efficiently kill chickens and prepare them for food consumption, otherwise i'd advise finding someone qualified who can do the job for you.
Anyhoo, 'nuff of the killing and eating of chickens and stuff.
I think you did a great job rescueing these chickens, batttery chickens live a life full of suffering and pain, i really think they should make battery farming illegal- its an aweful way to farm animals. I hope everything goes smoothely for you, if you have anymore questions feel free to ask .
They do like affection though, especially have their "ears" gently stroked (they often fall asleep while having this done they like it that much), they can become very tame and can even respond to commands and their names like they are dogs or something. It can take them a while before they are completely trusting of you, but they can very rewarding and endearing little animals to have as pets .

 

[Rhiannon]

Sounds terrible that the battery hens have no feathers and parts of their beaks missing. I didnt know that kind of thing happened at those farms.

I am trying to convince hubby to let me buy some 1 day old chickens from the hatchery up the road, but I'm not getting anywhere with him..

 

[Teri]

Sounds terrible that the battery hens have no feathers and parts of their beaks missing. I didnt know that kind of thing happened at those farms.

I am trying to convince hubby to let me buy some 1 day old chickens from the hatchery up the road, but I'm not getting anywhere with him..

It is, Icried when I first saw them, and the worst of it is that there were some at the sanctuary in a far worse condition than these. Definitely keep on at your hubby 2 get some, they're great little personalities, and even contribute towards their upkeep!!

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Hmm, i wouldn't recommend taking 1day old chicks to look after as its a very difficult and time consuming job, chicks are very demanding to look after, you need to be there at like 6am when they wake up and there when they go to sleep at sun down- if you are not them for them all the time when they need up, they'll constantly cheap very loudly and unhappily until you are there- they get very stressed out when left alone. They also need to be kept warm all the time- usually the hen would sit on them whenever required during the day or night to warm them up every now and then, but its difficult if its just you and you have to get on with your life and do a job and everything.
Hens are also important as they'll teach and show the chicks many important life skills like what foods are good to eat, where to scratch in the earth for the best bugs, how to dust bath, how to groom themselves properly, how to communicate with other chickens well etc...Its why so many battery chickens are completely clueless when they first go outside as none of them ever had mother hens to teach them these things and they have never had opportunities to learn these things either.
The other problem is that the vast majority of battery chicks you'll get are males purely because the farms prefer to keep the females as they make more money. You can keep male chickens in large bachelor groups and they'll do fine in such groups, but they do like have females none the less so it basically comes down to whether you want;
a. A mixed gender group, preferably with at least 3-4females per male.
b. An all-male group of at least 3 males.
c. An all-female group of at least 3 females.

My brother recently rescued some battery hens, and he's currently having difficulty in moving them onto foods which don't look like powder (battery chicken food is often a kind of processed powdered stuff) because they simply don't recognise other stuff as food. He's beginning to have progress with them, but its going to be a long process. Some battery chickens even have to be taught how to walk as because they've spent their entire life in a cage where they can barely turn around, they don't even have the muscle in their legs to walk properly. He says the current new battery chickens won't go outside yet as they are scared of going outside because up until now all they've ever known is indoors. He put them in my mums greenhouse and apparently they just sat there not knowing what to do, poor things.
But one thing you can do if you have clueless poor battery chickens is put them with an experienced normal free range chicken. Chickens learn things off each other and if you put some hard done by battery chickens with some healthy free range ones, in time they'll learn many things off the free range chickens like how to groom themselves properly so their feathers start to grow back better and their skin health improves or how to scratch in the dirt to look for food etc .

I would totally advise people not to buy battery hen meat or eggs or products which could contain them because if you buy them you are financially supporting a very immoral and cruel form of farming. Barn range chickens are just as worst off as the battery chickens (in some cases even more worse off), the only difference is that intead of being crammed into puny cages they are crammed in their tens of thousands into a barn with even less space to move around due to the vast numbers of them. Desease spreads very quickly through barn range chickens and i have seen the rotting corpses littering the floor, none are ever treated for their deseases purely because its almost imposible to tell a sick chicken from a healthy one once its slaughtered, prepared and cooked on your dinner plate.
edit: Free range and organic is the label you should go for- free range chickens have a massively better quality of life than barn or battery range chickens, and organic chickens are often healthier due to better quality foods (its also better for the environment since the lack of pesticides and herbicides and things used in farming their foods). Its also healthier for you too- many battery chicken feeds have cancer causing agents and are full of hormones, these foods are banned form human consumption but alllowed for animal consumption. But we don't know how bad the second consumption of these animal feeds are when we eat animals that have been fed them as we don't yet know the long term effects of them etc. Some experts are already fearing that these animal feeds stuffed with chemicals and hormones and things could have a negative impact on our health from eating animals which have been raised on them as many of these toxins and chemicals stay in the food chain and thus are inevitably passed down to us when we eat such animals.

 

[Teri]

Hmm, i wouldn't recommend taking 1day old chicks to look after as its a very difficult and time consuming job, chicks are very demanding to look after, you need to be there at like 6am when they wake up and there when they go to sleep at sun down- if you are not them for them all the time when they need up, they'll constantly cheap very loudly and unhappily until you are there- they get very stressed out when left alone. They also need to be kept warm all the time- usually the hen would sit on them whenever required during the day or night to warm them up every now and then, but its difficult if its just you and you have to get on with your life and do a job and everything.
Hens are also important as they'll teach and show the chicks many important life skills like what foods are good to eat, where to scratch in the earth for the best bugs, how to dust bath, how to groom themselves properly, how to communicate with other chickens well etc...Its why so many battery chickens are completely clueless when they first go outside as none of them ever had mother hens to teach them these things and they have never had opportunities to learn these things either.
The other problem is that the vast majority of battery chicks you'll get are males purely because the farms prefer to keep the females as they make more money. You can keep male chickens in large bachelor groups and they'll do fine in such groups, but they do like have females none the less so it basically comes down to whether you want;
a. A mixed gender group, preferably with at least 3-4females per male.
b. An all-male group of at least 3 males.
c. An all-female group of at least 3 females.

My brother recently rescued some battery hens, and he's currently having difficulty in moving them onto foods which don't look like powder (battery chicken food is often a kind of processed powdered stuff) because they simply don't recognise other stuff as food. He's beginning to have progress with them, but its going to be a long process. Some battery chickens even have to be taught how to walk as because they've spent their entire life in a cage where they can barely turn around, they don't even have the muscle in their legs to walk properly. He says the current new battery chickens won't go outside yet as they are scared of going outside because up until now all they've ever known is indoors. He put them in my mums greenhouse and apparently they just sat there not knowing what to do, poor things.
But one thing you can do if you have clueless poor battery chickens is put them with an experienced normal free range chicken. Chickens learn things off each other and if you put some hard done by battery chickens with some healthy free range ones, in time they'll learn many things off the free range chickens like how to groom themselves properly so their feathers start to grow back better and their skin health improves or how to scratch in the dirt to look for food etc .

I would totally advise people not to buy battery hen meat or eggs or products which could contain them because if you buy them you are financially supporting a very immoral and cruel form of farming. Barn range chickens are just as worst off as the battery chickens (in some cases even more worse off), the only difference is that intead of being crammed into puny cages they are crammed in their tens of thousands into a barn with even less space to move around due to the vast numbers of them. Desease spreads very quickly through barn range chickens and i have seen the rotting corpses littering the floor, none are ever treated for their deseases purely because its almost imposible to tell a sick chicken from a healthy one once its slaughtered, prepared and cooked on your dinner plate.
edit: Free range and organic is the label you should go for- free range chickens have a massively better quality of life than barn or battery range chickens, and organic chickens are often healthier due to better quality foods (its also better for the environment since the lack of pesticides and herbicides and things used in farming their foods). Its also healthier for you too- many battery chicken feeds have cancer causing agents and are full of hormones, these foods are banned form human consumption but alllowed for animal consumption. But we don't know how bad the second consumption of these animal feeds are when we eat animals that have been fed them as we don't yet know the long term effects of them etc. Some experts are already fearing that these animal feeds stuffed with chemicals and hormones and things could have a negative impact on our health from eating animals which have been raised on them as many of these toxins and chemicals stay in the food chain.

It was strange with these ones, they went straight into the eglu the evening they were brought "home", but the following morning they were scratching around in the dirt like they'd never known any different!! Though they had been released a few days previously.
They're fed layer's mash, which is quite powdery/gritty, but are delighted when they find a worm or two, and like raiding the compost heap too.
We're all veggie, so breeding etc isn't really an issue, just keeping them primarily as pets, although the eggs are an added bonus. (they've stopped laying so frequently now, i guess they were fed some kind of hormone in the farm 2 make them lay more often, which is probably out there system by now). I'd like to get a couple myself, but have to share the garden with the flat upstairs..I don't think they'd be very impressed!

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

Unless you are completely vegetarian though, you can still end up eating badly farmed animal products. My fiance is vegetarian, but he'll still eat things like eggs and dairy products- i myself am not a vegetarian, but i don't eat a great deal of meat either way. I used to buy things like cakes from the supermarkets for example, but after a while i realised the eggs used in making such cakes were all battery farmed eggs, so i stopped buying the cakes. So my conclusion is that unless the product specifically states its ingredients are free range and/or organic, it most likely isn't
Pretty much every farm animal, from ducks, turkeys, chickens, cows, sheep, goats etc, man has found a way to farm them in a cruel way, from everything from 0 grazing to battery and intensive farming etc. The choice you need to make is what sorts of farming methods you what to financially support with your money when you buy such products. IMHO (in my honest/humble opinion), you don't need to be a vegetarian to live off a much more morrally correct humane diet, and its completely posible in even this day and age to do so, you just need to put more thought into what you are buying exactly and make the needed choices to lead a better food lifestyle and diet etc.
I stopped eating at places like Macdonalds, KFC, Burger king etc years ago due to the fact all their animal products are battery farmed or farmed in other cruel ways. Their food also tends to very fattening, and it only tastes nice because of that addictive chemical they put into it (i forget its name, i'll look it up in a mo).
I'm very lucky as my town still has a local butcher, green grocer, bakery, fish monger etc which have not all been killed off by the local massive supermarket in the town, and i'm lucky because my local butcher in particular only stocks and sells free range and organic animal products and relies purely on small and independant local farms, so it supports the community and local economy in a very large and important way unlike the local supermarket. Most supermarkets have their own battery farms and things and are bad for local economies as they put independant and small farmers and shops out of buisness as they slaughter the competeticion. It was after i read "SHOPPED" by Joanna Blythman (which i highly recommend reading) that i really started to make changes to the exact places i shopped at and not just the sorts of things i bought.

There's no doubt that supermarkets are very convinient, but i am glad i rely an aweful lot less on them now for my shopping- not only do i get out and about more as i walk too and forth from all my local shops to do my shopping, but i eat an aweful lot less things like ready made meals and do an aweful lot more of my own cooking from scratch...Which is basically cheaper and more enjoyable to do really, and it makes it easier to control what exactly goes into my diet, and i'm eating better quality and nicer tasting foods now as well- a couple of years ago i hardly knew how to cook any recipes, but now i know a whole range and my knowledge of recipes is still expanding futher !
I used to be really bored with food in the past when i did supermarket shoping, and the whole supermarket thing is connected to many of the bad farming methods in existance today, it was like no matter how much food i had in the fridge i'd still be stuck deciding what to eat every night. But now eating is a lot more interesting, my love of food and cooking has been re-sparked since i started relying less on supermarkets and more on buying good wholesome ingredients from small local shops. I think as long as you have 30mins spare everyday (which the vast majority, even busiest, of people have), you can cook some really nice stuff in that ammount of time- there are plenty of cook books now days specialising in simple/easy and quick recipes to do as well if you are struck for idea's .

And i'm planning on growing loads of stuff in my small garden this year too. Last year i grew heaps of large cherry tomato's from just a couple of plants, which provided me with great tasting tomatoe's throughout the summer and early autum. So i'm planning on growing a larger variety of things this year as the tomatoes were a great success last year despite the massive heat wave we had during the summer. You really don't need much space at all to grow stuff- even if you just have a window sill in your kitchen, you can still grow a wide variety of spices and herbs in litte containers on it and things like ginger, garlick and spring onions etc.
I know i'm probably going slightly off-topic now, but i think the subject of food and farming and animals and things is a very important subject indeed .

 

[grahamsokel]

I keep Light sussex,white stars,Black leghorns,Dutch,and have 6 X battery hens then i have silkie bantam eggs in the incubator.

When you start getting eggs from them there is no reason why you cant collect warm eggs as long as you collect them daily,If you collect them daily a warm egg just means it is fresh layed.Most hens will only go broody if she has eggs or an egg to go broody on this can even be a pot egg

Hatching of Hens eggs only takes 18-21 days not a month or more as mentioned already Its duck eggs that take a month to hatch

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

I keep Light sussex,white stars,Black leghorns,Dutch,and have 6 X battery hens then i have silkie bantam eggs in the incubator.

When you start getting eggs from them there is no reason why you cant collect warm eggs as long as you collect them daily,If you collect them daily a warm egg just means it is fresh layed.Most hens will only go broody if she has eggs or an egg to go broody on this can even be a pot egg

Hatching of Hens eggs only takes 18-21 days not a month or more as mentioned already Its duck eggs that take a month to hatch

True, its been a while since i last had chicks around. Picking warm eggs was just something i personally never did, we had so many hens at one point once (160+) on the farm that during the warmer months when dozens of the hens started to sitting on their eggs i just found it easier to leave the warm eggs in case hens were sitting on them . We did have hens which sat on there eggs for up to 4 weeks though, so i think it varies a lot sometimes (maybe we just had super broody hens or something).