“I’m not getting any more hens!”

Just a quick post today to let you know what I’m up to at the weekend!

On Saturday 10th September I’m helping the British Hen Welfare Trust on one of their re-homing days. I’ve been volunteering with them for a while now and it’s something I really enjoy. The people I volunteer with are great and we all share the same desire – to rescue and rehome as many ex-batts/caged hens as we can.

I help with the Lancashire team and this weekend we are collecting and re-homing around 900 hens. At 18 months of age, no longer seen as commercially viable for egg production, these girls would normally be destined for slaughter.

We usually start emptying the cages at the farm around 9am and the hens are packed into crates. From here they’re transported to the re-homing barn where they experience their first taste of freedom. It’s dark, dusty and noisy inside the sheds at the farm with hundreds upon hundreds of hens in cages, stacked row upon row. We work quickly and have different roles but whatever you do, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get dusty, pecked and pooped on! We each carry between 6 to 8 hens at a time from the cages to the crates outside so with all these trips backwards and forwards it’s great exercise!

This picture was taken at the re-homing location after we’d unpacked a few hundred feisty barn hens. I remember when we opened the back of the horse trailer to start unloading the crates, we were greeted by some inquisitive face of girls who had escaped and were stood on top of the crates and not inside them!

This was one of those occasions when I had adamantly declared prior to the day that I wasn’t coming home with any more hens. I came home with two, Nora & Camilla!

I’d spotted Nora quite early on, she was tiny and desperately trying to get to the food we had put out but kept getting knocked by all the other hens. I picked her up and knew as soon as I had held her that I wanted to take her home; there was absolutely nothing of her and she was filthy. In my defence, I did (feebly and unconvincingly) try to hand her over to the co-ordinator so she could be put with the other poorly girls but it was a foregone conclusion really – as soon as my incredibly effective ‘poorly hen radar’ had spotted her, it wasn’t ever going to turn out any differently.

My husband was helping that day too and to counter my tiny, scrappy little hen he chose a big, buxom girl who we named Camilla after the hen in the Muppet Show!

Sadly, Nora was only with me until 18th December 2015 as she turned out to be a very poorly girl. It was a very short retirement for Nora but she experienced freedom, was loved, spoilt and had someone who still misses her now she’s gone.

Camilla is still with us and enjoying every day to the fullest – she definitely deserves a blog post of her own!

I absolutely love re-homing days – it’s difficult having to leave behind the hens we can’t take, but incredibly rewarding seeing the girls we have rescued experiencing freedom and starting their new, cage free lives.

I have said (again) that I’m not coming home with any more girls on Saturday – I like my little flock of four. Whether I’ll manage it or not, I don’t know! I’m automatically drawn to the poorly girls who need a bit of extra TLC and find I just can’t help falling in love with them. I’ll let you know whether I end up with any extra girls or not so watch out for a new post!

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P.S. If you can add a few extra girls to your flock or if you like the idea of keeping hens, it’s not too late to get in touch with the BHWT! The link above (in red) will take you to the British Hen Welfare Trust website or you can find them on Facebook or Twitter. They re-home hens at over 30 locations across the UK so why not find one near you?