iatebrisbane.com

This is the story of our lady chickens, who came into our life a few months ago. Since moving in together Darren and I have had a good number of animals, 3 cats, 4 chooks, 6 quails, 2 cockatiels – not all at the same time,  it’s been wonderful seeing them grow and change, see their individual personalities, collecting the eggs from the birds and getting cuddles from the cats. Over the years though, they’ve either passed on or moved on and for the last year we’ve been down to just one cat, Lennox. Finally after feeling settled with baby routines we decided it was time for more animal chaos!

We still had the chook-pen out the back and decided to re-furbish it a bit. We started looking around for places to buy chickens. I read on another blog that the girls’  parents used to keep chickens and would get the older chooks from battery farms. I thought we’d give this a go too.

(Hello Readers! Yes, holding a chicken is much more awkward than you can imagine!)

I found an organisation that rescues hens from battery farms before they are… made into fertilizer. I contacted them to find out more. Within a few days they were back in touch and had a batch of hens ready for us. We went out to only get 2 hens, but we decided on 3, after some not-so-gentle persuasion from the rescuers.  When we picked them up from the lady’s home, they all looked a little worse for wear. A few were rather featherless and had had their beaks cut short, a very common practice in Battery farms.  When we got them home we placed them in the chook-pen and kept a good eye on them for the first few days. They often would hold their feet up off the ground, more so than usual, probably because they weren’t used to having solid ground underneath them, since they had been in cages up until then. 

The first Day

They took a good week to come right after such a life-changing experience, and now they are very friendly and even calm around our little one – who often wants to give them cuddles! They happily eat our kitchen scraps and grains, and surprisingly have left our little garden mostly alone! Often when I weed the garden they’ll peck at my toes, buttons and my wedding rings, it’s kind of strange having chickens wanting to hang around so much, but I’ve come to enjoy it – my own little piece of rural Australia in the inner suburbs.

Now looking a little better!

 The eggs at first had awfully thin shells and pale-coloured yolks. Now after a couple of months the shells are much thicker and the yolks are golden yellow and delicious.  So, since that first day, we’ve been averaging less than 1 egg a day from the 3 of them, which is less that what we’d hoped for. However, we have taken into account that it has been winter the whole time we’ve had them and their bodies would be focusing on re-feathering and getting used to the cool environment.  Hopefully they’ll start laying a bit more over summer. I think next time we get chickens we will get younger pullets so we are maximising egg production.  Whatever happens,we’re very happy that we were able to give these three ladies a life outside of the cages.