I just adopted 10 rescue chickens. Here’s why
Hinterland Homesteading with Racheal Pascoe
I just love having chickens. I love feeding them, watching them and collecting the eggs. Some of my fondest childhood memories have been around chickens. My dear Uncle Jim, who was an artist, would decorate a chicken egg when we were little and write our name on it so beautifully. He would put it in the nesting box for us to find on our birthday. The thrill! Imagine having chickens so clever they could lay personalised eggs.
Having chickens of my own is something I really enjoy. Well, except for when you need to entirely clean out the pen and you are gerning and muck is all splashed up your legs. Then a bit lands in your mouth. You pray it is just dirt, but you know it’s not.
Mucky jobs aside, the benefits of keeping your own chickens are, you can feed them good food, including kitchen scraps and you get delicious eggs, even when the supermarkets are out of stock of eggs.
I have a small flock of odd chooks at the moment, so I thought I would get a few more to boost numbers and therefore eggs. Well, you can hardly buy a normal Isa Brown or Australorp (normal sort of chickens) here on the Sunshine Coast currently. The wait lists are all about 2 months long and then the birds are $40 and some are up to $80 each. These prices are unheard of. I know there has been a bird flu break out down south and thousands of chickens have been put down. So, I guess our price hike and lack of supply is linked to that.
So, I thought that I would ‘rescue’ some ex-battery hens instead! They could come and have a lovely life here at home. Ex-battery hens are usually 18 months old and not commercially viable anymore, so the farms cull them. Within a week I sourced some chickens and I was delighted.
But this is when I got to thinking… I believe I am helping by giving these birds a great home, the chance to peck around in grass, feel the sunshine, grow a full set of feathers, not live in a cage, only have one day time every 24 hours and not worry about where their next lot of food is coming from. Or am I enabling the entire chicken egg industry to continue by taking their waste so easily? Or is it bigger than even that? Will I be bucking the whole commercial egg industry by having birds that were once theirs, live their best lives and produce eggs happily for many years longer than they would have. So those same birds will feed my family, and I certainly won’t have to buy eggs from the commercial egg farmers ever. Yes, that is what I will do.
After much thought, I am going to go ahead and adopt the rescue hens. Why should they miss out on living their best lives because I am overthinking it? So off we go on Saturday to collect 10 rescue hens. Saving the world, one chicken at a time.
Happy homesteading everyone!
Racheal Pascoe: “After much thought, I am going to go ahead and adopt the rescue hens.”