They came straight off the back of a lorry and were placed carefully – top to tail – in three cat carriers, two hens in each. Broken feathers stuck from the air vents, bright, suspicious, amber eyes peered out. We drove them home, listening out for any squawks of distress, but they were silent. Bemused, exhausted, probably wearily resigned to whatever fate awaited them next.
These former battery hens, who’d spent the entirety of their short lives living in metal cages no bigger than a sheet of A4, should have been on their way to slaughter
These former battery hens, who’d spent the entirety of their short lives living in metal cages no bigger than a sheet of A4, should have been on their way to slaughter. In just 18 months they’d worn themselves out, laying egg after egg after egg, and were now deemed worthless, their scrawny bodies fit only for pet food or maybe the chicken chunks in those ubiquitous and cheap ready meals. The British Hen Welfare Trust rescued over 200 of these little brown hens and had found adoptees like us to give them a home to live out the rest of their natural lives. An email today informed me that they’ve just rehomed their ‘one millionth hen’.
‘Don’t be too upset if some of them don’t make it through the night’, the lady with the paperwork warned us as we closed the lids of our cat carriers. ‘The farm they’ve come from isn’t one of the worst we’ve seen, but even so, some of these little ladies are just too weak.’ I’d carefully prepared their new home, a large wooden chicken coop left in the orchard by the previous owners of our house. Luxurious by hen standards and now softly bedded with scrubbed clean perches and a row of cosy nesting boxes. My husband had created a secure outdoor run and I painted an old bench and set it down next to the coop.
As we unloaded the girls, they rushed up to the end wall of the coop and formed a protective huddle, staring around. The high wooden ceiling must have freaked them out, used as they were to a tiny cage. It took about an hour before one of them left the crowd and hopped up onto a wooden perch craning her neck to see inside the nesting boxes. We named her Princess Margaret.
Princess Diana was next, shyly skirting around the edge before finding a new corner to stand in. Queen Elizabeth and Camilla stayed tight together while Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie fluffed themselves up and appeared to sleep.
They were all completely terrified of ‘the outside’, after all, they’d never set foot on grass or seen the sky. After a couple of days, I gently encouraged them out of the pop holes and the look of wonder on their little faces was a sight to behold. Margaret – not so brave now – shot straight back inside and peered out through the wire as the others – for the first time in their lives – exhibited proper chicken behaviour. How did they know to scratch and peck in the dust, seeking out bits of grit and tiny bugs? But scratch and peck they did, with great joy and concentration, nipping off the succulent tips of grass and generally enjoying their new-found freedom.
They also began to lay for us, slowly and hesitantly at first, but within a few days I was able to gather two or three good-sized light brown eggs a day. We lost our first girl a few weeks in. Princess Beatrice just wasn’t putting on weight and she spent more time than the others inside the coop, fluffed up in a solitary corner. One morning she was face down where she lay. At least she’d had the chance to feel the sun on her feathers.
On a slow work morning I’d take my coffee and sit with them, feeding them bits of strawberries, grapes and bananas and I noticed they all have a little happy dance; peck, peck, scratch with one foot, moonwalk speedily backwards with both feet and repeat. If you’ve ever wondered about the term ‘pecking order’, yep it’s from hens. After sadly losing Camilla in the same fashion as Beatrice, I decided to purchase some ‘posh’ birds with longevity that would complement my flock and lay us delicate pale blue and dark brown eggs.
It was a bit like suddenly enrolling a bunch of private school kids at a rough comprehensive. My four remaining battery girls did not like the hoity-toity newcomers with their fluffy feet and glossy feathers one single bit. There was a surge of schoolyard bullying and if there’d been a toilet, I guarantee that someone’s head would have been flushed down it. I separated them for a bit and made sure there were double feeders and water dispensers and eventually they all learned to rub along together with just the odd aggressive peck and pulled feather.
Now a happy gang of eight, a multi-layered chorus of ‘oooooo’ and ‘awwwww’ greets me when I approach with a tray of goodies. It’s like a Frankie Howerd convention as they look me up and down assessing what I’m going to add to their day. You don’t need a lot of room to keep chickens, just a small coop for nighttime and a patch of grass for a run. In return for a bit of feed, water and shelter they’ll provide you with eggs, top-quality manure for your roses, amusement, cute noises and dare I say it, affection. Go on, give a hen a home, you won’t regret it.
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