Rescued Chickens

Viewing

If you are interested in giving a good, life-long home to any of our animals, please call us to discuss, to find out more and to make an appointment if you would like to meet the animal.

Viewing is strictly by appointment only.

Adoption Policy Click Here

Chicken Adoption – What You Need To Know - Click Here

We take in chickens from unwanted homes as well as rescue ex-battery and free range hens. Each year millions of hens are sent for slaughtered at only 18 months old and replaced with young, all in the name of cheap food. Once a hen lays less than 5 eggs a week, they become uneconomic for the farmer.

Egg laying hens are have been selectively bred to maximise egg production. This means that they lay on average 314 eggs a year, naturally they would only lay 20. An egg is similar to a period in a mammal, if it was fertilised by a cockerel and the hen was broody sitting on her egg, it would hatch in to a young hen or cockerel.

We try to rescue them and find them loving homes.We often rescue hundreds at a time and then rehome them. Please let us know if you would like to take on some chickens, they make great pets and are becoming increasingly popular.

This poor girl is typical of what battery hens look like when they come to us. They live their short lives without seeing daylight or having enough space to perform the natural behaviours that they want to. Each hen has the same size space as a piece of A4 paper, not even enough space to open their wings. Many hens end up in this state through self mutilation.

Over 100,000,000 hens will suffer these appalling conditions in the UK until battery hen cages become outlawed. In 2012 battery cages will cease to exist but unfortunately they will only be replaced by so called ‘enriched’ cages. These new cages will give hens a little more room, perches, dust baths and nest boxes, but little more.

Anybody that owns hens know that hens do not belong in cages and love nothing more than scratching around in earth and adore sunbathing with their wings outstretched.  We think hens deserve to have the sun on their backs.

 A Rescued Battery Hen with a broken wing.

battery

This is a rescued broiler chicken, these are selectivly bread for meat, not eggs, they live a short but horific life. Click on the link below to see a short film about the life of a broiler chicken. 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=rpbtBgLfl90

The girls settling in for the night with Gilbert Grape the Guinea Fowl Broilers are large chickens bred specifically for meat.  Due to their large size they can suffer from many health problems including weak hearts. This one had bumblefoot, a quick operation brought relief to this hen which previously had trouble walking.