Had a really hectic weekend and we are both still knackered and its only tuesday! On Thursday decided its nearly my birthday ( wont say how ancient I am)and emailed Little Hen Rescue since I would love to have some ex-battery chickens. I first got in touch with them when I found a knitting pattern for jumpers for hens on the internet and decided then - January- I would like some hens but we were not ready gardenwise. We still are not really but its just time and we have demolished about half of the tumble down buildings so do have some space now. I was intending to get them mid-July but they emailed back to say they had booked us in for Sunday! So having done a market in Derbyshire I came home swapped from van to car, left M to take care of the rest of the pets( dogs cockateils etc) and drove to Norfolk to get my chickens. We have 3. Should have got 6 tho so have asked for 3 more in about a month. They are lovely! They are a bit bald but not as bad condition as many. Because I live so far away from the rescue place they gave me very feathered good condition birds. Or relatively speaking. One has a floppy comb due to malnutrition and all are underweight. The state of some of them there was pitiful. They have a hospital wing for birds with broken wings - normally they are left to suffer untreated on the battery farms. One pen has birds with a disease who cannot got to homes. Another has birds who have legs so weak they cannot stand up. All will be rehomed eventually though apparently - except those with diseases. These people do such a worthwhile job and work long hours for free every weekend to rehome these poor creatures. The woman who started Little Hen Rescue is called Jo and she has also rescued cockateils. One of her cochateils has had its wings stapled. Can you believe that? What kind of human being would do such a terrible thing to a bird. Being a parrot it can climb and lives in an aviary with other rescued cockateils but the idea of this poor bird having its wings stapled haunts me. Apparently the vet reckons the staples cannot be removed due to having grown over. Poor animal.
Anyway Little Hen Rescue is wonderful. Inspiring. They had 10,000 birds to rehome last weekend else they would be slaughtered. They managed to rehome most of these. The place was very difficult to find and i just got lost and they came and recused me - made me feel a right prat I can tell you but anyway if you ever fancy recuing chickens ( they also do geese and ducks) I would recommend them. My chickens are currently in temporary housing but even this small 6ft by 2 ft run is better than they are used to. The house is good tho and till today only one had ventured out of it into the run and to get them out I had to force them thru the door cos I wanted to clean the inside of their house and didnt want to attempt with them in the way. On battery farms they have 6 chickens to a space the size of an A3 sheet of paper so mine have a huge area even though I feel guilty cos it is small! It will be better once the new run is built. Mine seem quite happy tho scrattching around and munching on food. You have to give them mash to begin with cos they are not used to anything else and make sure they are drinking but it all seems to be going well so far. I have given them some tomatoes, cougettes and carrots which they ate, but they didnt like pasta. The run is very makeshift since we expected to have another 3 weeks to get ready but it didnt work out like that so now we will have to move the wood store and they will then get a space about 10ft by 14ft to live in which is more like it. Also then I can get another 3! M worked very hard on Saturday, sunday after the market( whilst I drove to get them) and monday after he got home from work, to make this home for them. He is very tired still today. This proves how fast you can work tho when something needs doing.I wish we could be this fast at renovating the house. The new chicken run will be ongoing for a couple of weekends I reckon cos to build it we have to move loads of wood but its seasoned now and in reality we are unlikely to be given huge amounts of fire wood ever again so probably wont need such a huge storage space for it so it will be a new chicken home. My birthday has come early this year. Time to get back to making stuff for the festival now.......
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