Building the hen run…

I’ve been trying to think of an Alcatraz/Colditz based hen pun but my tired brain can’t come up with one.

The thing is for a while now a couple of the hens have been regularly escaping. It was pretty easy for them because we’ve always had a Heath Robinson approach to run building and hens are really quite clever.

But this one is different. It’s taken quite a few weekends to plan and build the new run even though it’s a pretty basic frame because it’s an impenetrable fortress using fence posts, 2”x1” treated wood and chicken wire.

We’ve always had a lot of trouble with mud before (and hen churned mud can get really quite smelly) so after a bit of research I decided to put down a layer of weed-supressing membrane…

…and then a thick layer of bark chippings. The membrane allows water through but stops the hens churning the ground and the chippings sinking without a trace. It’s hard to tell from the picture above but the chicken wire extends across the floor of the run for half a foot and the membrane was laid over the top and pinned with lots of tent pegs.

We put boards around the edge of the run to stop the chippings from being kicked out by the hens and I had some big branches from when I cut the hedge which made perfect perches.

We kept the old gate, I just extended it upwards and added chicken wire. With any luck the hens won’t escape anymore although I did notice them walking along the fence tapping every few inches which reminded me of Jurassic Park.

So maybe they won’t escape, or maybe it’s just eggstremely (*sigh*) unlikely. I’ll keep you posted!

Beccy

A chook update…

We got three new chooks last Saturday! They are sort of ex-bats. Sort of, because battery hens were banned in the UK in January (woo!), so these aren’t from battery cages but from a ‘higher welfare barn’ or some such thing. Better for the hens in the short term but after a couple of years they still get turned into pet food.

You can see the difference between Rigby (on the far right above and at the front of the top picture) and the three new girls – even in higher welfare environments they still come out looking shabby with patchy feathers, trimmed beaks and wiry little bodies.

We had only had one egg in a week though - not unusual, the shock of the move often gives them pause – but that egg was a few days ago. Why only one? Well a little walk around the run (AKA next-door’s neglected garden) this afternoon gave us the answer when we found a grass nest holding a clutch of five eggs! I’m convinced there must be more somewhere but a couple of big patches of nettles stopped me probing further.

After a flurry of pecking Rigby has taken well to the new chooks. Lucy is oblivious, but she’s now totally blind – you remember Lucy, who seemed on her last legs almost exactly a year ago when we had to leave her with a friend while we went to New York? Well, she’s fine-ish. She gets around ok but has trouble finding food (she might have no sense of smell either) so we hand feed her twice a day. Considering hen’s propensity for dropping dead with no notice, Lucy has done amazingly well!

So that’s that. We Just have to find a way to get the hens to lay in the nest-box. Any ideas?

Beccy

A new home for the chooks…

We don’t spend much time in the front garden these days, so we decided to move the chooks into the back garden, because that’s where the workshop is, and that’s where we always are. We decided that they’d have more room this way too.
We usually grow veggies around the greenhouse, but with a bit of fencing we could put the chooks there instead.

We made the gate to be deliberately ramshackle! We were going for a rustic look rather than ‘The Good Life’ and when we get around to putting the paving back down, and planting in front of the hen house it might just look like that. Or we’ll paint it green.
The old run didn’t have a gate, and it’s heaven to be civilised for a change and not have to climb over a fence to put them to bed!

The inside of the house – note, they have never once used their perch.

To the side there is a fence that is high on the hen’s side, but only 3’ on the other so my neighbour can easily feed them (he likes to collect worms for them). This photo was taken while we were still sorting it out – now they have logs to perch on and a string we can hang green things from. The plant at the front right is spinach, they love spinach so within an hour that had gone, but I’ve got a big spinach bed in the front garden to treat them with.

And on the other side of the greenhouse we attached an old cupboard door. We stapled chicken wire to the open part for extra added rusticity.
Trust me, by summer it will definitely look more rustic and less Good Life!
Beccy

Davy’s been poorly…

Hello folks. I’ve been absent for a week, I know, but it’s been hell of a week.
Well, two weeks really. Dave, the last of our original hens has been sick. She looked a bit under the weather so we brought her in and to keep an eye on her. She was being very picky about her food – interested, but not eating. I’ve been syringe feeding ever since. This continued for about a week and we thought she might have worms despite using verm-x (isn’t a trawl around the forums enlightening? Turns out verm-x = evil and useless) We ordered the proper medicinal wormer from the net – one we had been avoiding because we didn’t want to pump our beleaguered ex-bats full of chemicals. The next morning her crop was full and it looked like she wouldn’t be able to take the meds. A phone chat with our wonderful poultry vet confirmed worms, and I rushed round to pick up some drops to put on her skin. He was worried about her crop though and thought she might have an impaction further down that he wouldn’t be able to clear.
I'm beginning to think the vet was right, and she may have blockage beyond her crop. I’ve been treating for sour crop and I thought it had emptied yesterday morning but when I got back from work she was unable to stand and her crop was full as ever this morning. She has gone from looking peaky for two weeks to looking near death overnight. I didn't expect her to be alive when I got home from work today, and had a good cry and said goodbye this morning but she's still here, hanging on. She's extremely weak, her eyes are closed and she's just lying there rather than sitting. If I try and stand her up she falls forward and I have to catch her. I’m sure she's skinnier than she was two weeks ago but I can't bring myself to weigh her to find out.
When we first got hens, a lady I met said they bring you nothing but heartache. I'm looking at Rita and Lucy trying to shelter from the rain and I have to say I don't wholeheartedly agree. I love watching them pecking about, and I'm proud they have all been rescued from evil battery cages - but when they die the heartache shows itself.
At least Davey got to see the sun.
I’m sitting watching Brief Encounter (I just watched the original Sweet November, it’s that sort of night) with Dave on my lap, sleeping. I know to most people she’s only a hen, and I feel a bit foolish being so melodramatic, but to me she’s no different to a dog or any one of my cats, and I know it’s only a matter of time.
So for now I’m signing off, to get a coffee and pull myself together, and decide whether I’m going to spend my bank holiday weekend sewing through my mountain of lovely fabric or building more workshop furniture.
That’s it Beccy, focus on the Nice things.
Beccy

Poor Vera…

Sadly, Vera died yesterday. She was looking a bit low and wasn’t eating very much so we brought her in to keep an eye on her. She was still eating on the morning of the second day, but by the afternoon I was syringe feeding her every few hours. We tried everything we knew but when I got up at 6.30 yesterday morning to feed her, she had already passed away.
It’s too, too sad. I don’t think it had anything to do with her operation – her stitches had totally healed and up until a few days ago she was fine, but she didn’t put the weight back on as quickly as I had hoped.
Mum was brilliant - although she was terribly upset herself, she went into full ‘mum’ mode (you know the one, where she manages to organise the funeral, and keep you supplied with cups of tea and hugs and funny things to watch on telly) She made sure the rest of us were ok.
She also reminded me of a conversation we had with a lady, ages before we got our hens, who was rushing home to care for one of her own who was sick. When we said we were getting some of our own she said that they bring you lots of heartache, and she sure was right. There are lots of good things, but too much sadness.
When you have a sick hen, the first thing you do is check the interweb for advice and the one thing you very quickly realise is that a lot of hens die for (apparently) no reason. One day they are fine and the next they are gone. The best you can do is narrow it down to a ‘probable’ and keep an eye on the rest of them.
I’m really sad, and a bit sniffy as I’m writing. We’d had her for a year on the 26th so at least she had some time out of the battery cage to see the sun and feel the rain but I feel awful that we couldn’t give her more.
Beccy

A Vera update and a thankyou.

Well, first I’m going to do the thankyou – thanks for all your nice, bolstering comments, It’s amazing how people you’ve never met will give their time to make you feel better – thanks guys :)
Thanks also for helping me believe that I did the right thing for Vera. I know she’s only a chicken, but she’s not livestock to us, she’s one of our babies (I swear, I’m going to be a crazy cat lady when I grow up, but with hens)
We let her back into the run on Saturday night, just in time to go to bed because I read somewhere that hens can’t count and they don’t notice there is one more in the morning!? Well, that never worked before, but the pecking order doesn’t seem to have changed and Vera is right back at the top. That’s her in the middle attacking everything in sight…

Of course she might be at the top because she’s ravenous and won’t let a morsel escape her!
Beccy

Bad days with a sick hen…

CAUTION: Please don’t read on if you are in any way squeamish!
It started on Monday. Vera’s comb went purple and droopy, and that never means good news. When Chuck was ill, her comb went purple too so I read everything I could find about it. A purple comb is a major indication of heart and respiratory problems and since we had already lost Chuck, I didn’t want to lose Vera too.
I checked her over and noticed her crop was huge and very hard. Back to the interweb for more research. It turned out that her crop might have become impacted and was cutting off her airway, and worst of all no food was passing to her stomach. She was incredibly thin. A hen’s crop becomes impacted because basically they can’t chew. In the wild they rip small pieces from plants to eat, but in captivity we are prone to chopping up stuff. If that stuff is small enough to swallow but big enough to get stuck the hen can get in big trouble. Long strands of grass are a also major culprit, but so is dry food (such as bread) if they don’t drink enough water.
There were lots of treatments I could try (thankyou to all the poultry forums!), but first I had to wait until the morning. It was important to make sure it was an impacted crop by checking it wasn’t empty in the morning. If it was it could have indicated something potentially worse, but thankfully (!) it was still there, round and hard as a baseball.
I tried syringe feeding her with olive oil first, then massaging her crop, but to no avail. I gave it a day but it wasn’t shifting.
I also found an article about feeding hens live maggots. I read that the maggots clear the crop of food and then get digested themselves. Sounded like a great idea (and full of protein-y goodness) Every hour or so I gave her a handful and she wolfed them down, but on Wednesday morning she wouldn’t touch them and was looking really depressed – not eating, with her tail held so low it was almost touching the floor.
Not eating is the worst sign there is. When a bird stops eating they’ve given up and they are going to die. I was desperate and had only one thing left to try – surgery.
I had read several accounts of this type of home surgery on hens, and I know it sounds drastic but I was assured that the area I would be working on would not be painful to her – all the accounts said the hen hadn’t struggled and was remarkably calm.
I made the bathroom as sterile as I could and gathered all the equipment I would need – disinfectant, towels, swabs, scalpel, forceps (both bought for an art project – I don’t want you to think I do this sort of thing a lot) and needle and thread in case the incision had to be larger than I thought.
I wrapped Vera in towels to get her wings out of the way and softly restrain her, sat down on the floor and tucked her under my arm. I was not looking forward to it, and only the fact that it was now or never made me carry on – she was on the verge of starving to death. I made a small incision through the skin over her crop, then moved the skin and made another in a slightly different place through the crop wall. There was very little bleeding and she didn’t struggle or make a noise, in fact she just sat there looking around like nothing odd was going on.
Her crop was jam packed with chopped cabbage, long grass, corn, wheat… and dead maggots. I gently pulled it all out bit by bit with the forceps, it took about an hour and I’ll never eat sauerkraut again (not really a loss, never eaten it in my life)
I used three stitches to sew her up and swabbed liberally with diluted disinfectant. I had to go to work in the afternoon, so I put her in a big box in the bathroom with plenty of antibioticy water. She was alert and awake and acting like nothing had happened.
Tonight she’s still in the box but very annoyed about it! Her crop is pink and her tail is up. We’ve been feeding her (and she’s ravenous) little and often with bread, yakult and crushed maggots mixed with antibiotics.
The whole thing was incredibly stressful, but seemingly only for me. Vera’s fine. I agonised, I really did, and I didn’t make the decision lightly. I felt incredibly ill afterwards, I have no fingernails left and I have spent an inordinate amount of the last few days sitting next to that box talking to her.
I feel weird writing it down but I’m sure I did the right thing.
Beccy

Chook rescue… and a note for vegetarians

Rescuing hens has got to be one of the most worthwhile things I’ve ever done. It looks odd when I write it down, but it’s true. It’s not until you see them in all their scraggy glory, terrified of the open spaces, most of their feathers missing that you realise just how terrible battery farming is.
It’s not the farmer’s fault, it’s ours – if we as consumers want to pay next to nothing for eggs and meat, the farmer has to produce them for next to nothing, and that means factory farming. After a year their laying drops and they are replaced with new hens – that’s when the rescuers swoop in!

Here they are waiting to be picked up on the coordinators farm, we were late so this is just a few of them and they are in remarkably good condition. When we picked up our first hens Vera, Chuck and Dave (bonus points if you can work out why we named them that!) they were in much worse condition than this – Vera had very few feathers and Dave has no tail and a badly broken toe. We came to get just two this time - only possible because sadly Chuck died a few months ago, and we have such limited space. I’d take them all if I could!

Releasing them into their new home was crazy – you’d think they would run for the open space, but no, they huddled together in the cat-box and eventually I had to take it to bits to get them out – Vera, Chuck and Dave were the same. It’s definitely all to much for them!

The first meeting was a bit dodgy, lots of clucking and flapping, but after a couple of days in separate runs (but able to see each other) we let them in together.

Dave immediately went for them both but the run goes a long way back and they were able to escape. I got some pine tar bitter beak stuff to put on their necks (although I managed to get more of it on me, and it really does taste vile – mental note, if it says to wear gloves, wear gloves!) Dave is still chasing them but the pecking stopped pretty much straight away.

 

That’s Rita on the left and Lucy on the right. Compared to Vera (on the left) and Dave (on the right) in the back they look really scraggy but it won’t take long for their feathers to grow back and to start acting like proper hens.

Keeping hens is not very different to keeping rabbits or guinea pigs – they need fresh water and food every day, and a bit of cleaning out, but they are surprisingly quiet and give you eggs. The best thing is knowing you saved them from becoming dog food, the filling for cheap pies or *shudder* baby food.

If you’d like to rescue battery hens, in the UK you can contact Hen Rehomers UK or the Battery Hen Welfare Trust. They have coordinators all over the country, so find one that’s near you. I can’t fine any charities in the US which re-home hens, but if you live near a battery farm, best thing is to go and ask directly, or check out the Backyard Chickens forum, which is a great resource for all things chook.

If you can’t keep hens at home, but would like to help somehow, join Hugh Fearnley Wittingstall’s Chicken Out campaign or simply…

…buy free range!

One last note: If you are vegetarian, always check the label. Don’t assume prepared food is free range, many vege brands use battery eggs in their products, especially own-brands. In the UK Tesco is a major culprit but Quorn and Linda McCartney are fine, and everything from M+S is free range. Also, if it’s certified organic, it has to be free range.

Phew! Sorry to get a bit heavy on you :)

Beccy