Chris has gone off to write a more chickeny, horsey, pussy related blog for the family.
Here you can learn about buying and restoring ex-battery hens…. Hmmm, too much classic car work on my mind..
At CRISPYSNIPS.COM you can find out how to go about looking after hens at home. Yup, if you’ve thought about doing it, then Chris will tell you what’s involved and how to go about doing it.
There are lots of sites telling you in depth how to keep hens, but not a lot give you a basic run down up front to let you know what you are letting yourself in for!
Her site also has horse and cat related tips and advice, plus lots of other news and views from around Chris!
After Chicken 11 passed away I mention to a friend who was still undecided as to wether getting hens was a good idea, that if he really thought he had made the wrong choice, that we’d take on his three girls.
Much though he liked them, he decided that it wasn’t going to work for him, so today we added these ex-battery hens to our flock.
V8, Bunty and Chicken 22 (named in respect of Chicken 11) have settled right in and seem happy enough. They have met Mel, Ginger, Terri 2, Turbo & Crispy (albeit through mesh fence) and there seem to be no squabbles at all. A few raised voices, but no chest puffing and sizing up.
Chicken Eleven is an ex-battery hen. We’ve had her in free-range freedom for just over a year now and she’s turned from a timid feather bare hen into the fully feathered friendly girl she is now.
She’s come from a battery farm which is cruel to say the least. Hens live under artificial light to make them lay more. Hens lay on a daily cycle and the artificial light is used to simulate shorter days. As such a hen really has no recovery time and is pushed until they are just disposed of.
Eleven has just suffered a problem that may mean she has limited time left with us if she doesn’t heal up. Her insides are now out. She’s pushed the back-end out (looks like the size of a big strawberry), and that’s not a good thing. She’s fine – not bothered at all by it – but it could be prone to infection, and it’ll lead her to being prey for the other chickens.
Sadly this means she may be put down if treatment doesn’t rectify the problem. One thing we have done is to keep her in the dark (to stop the egg laying) and feed her yoghurt/hen feed mix, with poultry spice. She has a hard-boiled egg for lunch to keep her protein intake up. One thing NOT to do is use any haemorrhoid creams on the ‘expulsion’ as this is not that type of thing and the creams will make it worse. We have seen lots of reports where natural honey smeared on the ‘expulsion’ helps… and that seems to be helping her.
Anyway, to make sure the back-end is kept clean we have had to soak her in a warm bath, which she really enjoys. To dry her off afterwards she has a blow dry…. yes… a blow dry.
She’s quite happy with the whole deal and even started to lay down and doze in the bath. I was sat next to her as she was blow dried and she leant up against me and started to doze again. She’s very content, and it’ll be a shame if we have to lose her.
Sometimespace 