Fowl Federation: an update on our girls, and rescue appreciation

Feb 26, 2025

We have been very busy doing animal things in the past week. We thought we had a mouse in the shed, which resulted in an emergency clear out of recycling. We don’t have a bin collection service, and instead opt to make a trip to the recycling centre every so often, storing all of our rubbish in the shed. We also store all of our animal food in the shed, in large totes. With the potential of a mouse, we realised we had to find an alternative way to store the food, so after the recycling was done, we made a trip to the farm shop and bought an 80L locking bin for the chicken feed, and a 20L box for the cat crunchies. A week on, and we seemingly have no mouse, but the jobs we did as a result of the threat were jobs that we had been putting off for months, with others taking priority. I am glad we got them done.

We got 500 new worms to put into our multi tier composter, and I managed to catch a glimpse of some of the previous gang, who have grown chubby and seemingly happy. I have been shredding the leafy scraps before feeding them, concerned about how I would feel if I was given a leaf of cabbage 55 times the size of me. We did some research into live black soldier fly larvae for aiding the breakdown of our toilet compost, and will update accordingly should we progress further with this.

We contacted the fowl rescue lady, and she said she will give us a date and time soon to collect some ducks and another couple of chickens. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a delay because of the Avian Influenza. We are down to our last chicken, Bennie, and though I joke that she’s an asshole, I do feel sorry for her at the moment. Her pen took quite a bit of damage in the storm, and some of the soil in her pen has turned to muck with how wet the weather has been. I spent a few hours on Friday tilling sand into the ground, putting tarp over the inner pen so she has a bit more shelter, pulling out any debris that shouldn’t be there, and adding straw to the ground. I also made her a little chicken kebab with leftover veggies, and put in a few makeshift roosting bars that she can try to hop up to.

I have been making a point of going out to have a chat with Bennie a few times a day, and trying to hand feed her a wee treat. She has been enjoying socialising, and I hope she has a better time when she has some friends to hang out with her - she previously hasn’t been terribly happy when new hens have been introduced to the flock, but I hope that this time might be different, as she is the minority this time. I am also growing some cat grass in a tray to throw into the pen when it’s ready, as grass no longer grows in the pen. I

Along with giving Bennie’s pens a makeover, we built the new coop for our imminent flock of ducks - I imagine there is not very much room in the existing coop for three chickens, two ducks and a drake. I have no idea what type of ducks we are getting, other than that they are rescues, but I have been running around shouting ‘WAP WAP WAP’ for a week now. There is a housing mandate due to the rising risk of avian influenza at the moment, so Bennie is on flockdown and not allowed out of her pen. This might delay the arrival of our ducks, but we’d rather wait a while and have them here, healthy, and minimise any spreading risk since we have a growing population of wild birds in our trees and hedges.

We often get asked what is a rescue chicken. A rescue chicken is a chicken that has usually been rescued from a battery farm, where they are kept in very small cages, and typically given hormone injections to force them to lay a lot more than they otherwise might. They are not given outside time to range, and cannot engage in normal chicken activities - perching, dust bathing etc. Then when they are around 18 months old, they are slaughtered - not for meat, just ‘disposed of’.

Free range eggs are a bit of a misnomer, and I would urge you to buy organic free range instead, as the difference in a few pennies makes a large difference in the quality of life for the hens. This year I hope to set up an honesty egg stall at the end of the lane, so that people can have access to eggs from extremely happy (and assholey) chickens. We have had a handful of comments about setting up cctv, what if people steal them etc, but that’s why it’s an honesty stall and not a shop. Six eggs can make a lot of meals.

Folks who run animal rescue services, especially the ones for cows, fowl, pigs, are doing very difficult, misunderstood work. Last year a lorry transporting chickens to the slaughterhouse caught fire. The lady who runs the fowl rescue went down and rescued a number of the chickens. Instead of gratitude and empathy, she was bombarded with a number of jokes about roast chicken. We like to get our chickens from this lady for a number of reasons. When we pay her for the chickens instead of elsewhere, we are: (a) not supporting the meat industry or bad animal living conditions (b) putting money directly into her being able to rescue more animals (she now has dogs and guinea pigs too) © giving the few animals we can manage a new happy life

A brief note on point ©. While researching duck care, I have recently noticed a number of comments along the lines of ‘we don’t name our hens/geese/ducks anymore, because they all eventually fall victim to predator attacks and it’s too hard to lose them if they have names.’ While I understand this logic, I feel as though the birds having names is a symptom, and not the problem. Every time we have had a predator issue, I have deeply felt the loss, then we have made a point of doing better and there is always something more you can do. All of our girls get names because they deserve them.

(aj)