Chicken-n-Veg

With our original five hens seemingly very settled, we decided that now was a suitable time to adopt three ex-battery hens as we had always intended. We got them from a local poultry supplier called Little Misses Chickens. As well as doing some small scale breeding and rearing of birds, they take in unwanted birds – hens, cockerels, ducks, guinea fowls, etc. They also do a Battery Hen Rescue day, every other month, where they rescue quite a large number of hens. These rescued hens are only sold on when they have had some time to recuperate. This meant that rather than get them in a sorrowful state, almost straight from the battery farm, our three ex-bats were well feathered and spritely. They were also already acclimatised to being outside with other hens. They do have droopy, pale combs, which (from reading online) is common for caged hens due to the high temp in their cages, but this will apparently improve over time. They are more than a year old and of the normal ginger Warren(ish) hybrid variety favoured by the commercial producers for their reliable egg production. We expect that these girls will provide our first eggs in the next day or so. Apparently they will lay about five eggs a week this year, dropping to four a week next year.

We introduced the three new hens into the run with our original five birds late in the afternoon. Apart from one scuffle, when Snowdrop got a few pecks for being very nosy as we put the first newcomer in, we haven’t seen any problems. They all seemed quite happy walking around and eating / drinking together. We will obviously monitor them in the coming days to make sure that there is no real trouble.  The older battery hens can certainly stick up for themselves, but so far don’t seem as they are going to bully our existing hens too much.

We fitted coloured leg bands to the new hens so we could tell them apart. The new girls have now been named Matilda, Pansy and Isobel.

When it came to dusk our younger hens went to bed early, as normal, leaving the 3 ex-bats alone in the run. Within a quarter of an hour, however, they sussed what they had to do and went up the ladder as well.

When I checked on them this evening the ex-bats were not using the perches, as expected – a year in a cage without a perch will do that ! I am going to lift them onto the perches every night, for a week or so, to see if they can get the hang of it.