More on Chooks

Our girls which Andrew has named Blanche, Dorothy and Rose after 3 of the Golden Girls are settling in.

Its is really interesting watching them, and to be honest I hadn't given too much thought about where commercially sold pullets come from. Watching these girls has given me a few clues.  They have a few behaviours that are a bit strange even for chooks who are settling in.

• They took a whole day and night and day to learn how to sit on the perch. The first night they just slept in the straw. The second day 2 of them figured out the perch, while Blanche who was a bit slower sat under them and got pooped on.
• They stay in the box part of their cage all day. They won't come out for food unless Andrew and I are there and they don't do normal chook things like scratch around and make a big mess with their straw. They don't walk around, they just sit almost on top of each other and squawk.
• They don't recognise milk thistle as being food, or vegie scraps as edible.
• They make a mad dash back to the box when they hear the sound of other birds [little birds] singing or a plane fly overhead.

Methinks they have been raised in a chook institution with little room possibly no daylight and certainly no perches. Poor chooks!! I hope that their rehabilitation doesn't take long and that they find happiness in relative freedom.  Tomorrow Andrew and a friend or two are transporting the chook shed to our place so they will have a fair bit of room to run scratch, perch, flap their wings and be happy. As they grow we'll add a wire run too for them to have a real chance to stretch their legs.

The Golden Girls in their temporary house.

This all reminds me of an innocent and ignorant childhood. As a kid, one of our fun family treats was to go to Happy Hens. It was like the best thing ever! They had giant slides, giant seesaws, some animals in pens, a cafe, gift shop and educational area. It was free [except the cafe and gift shop] and we loved it. I was too scared to go on any of the play equipment, but it was still really fun. They even had this big "Happy Hen" on the roof of their building. They eventually closed to the public because of vandalism. Happy Hens was actually a battery farm [in disguise?] and activists were taking advantage of the easy access to the property. It was the first time that I thought about chooks living squashed in cages purely for egg production, and how that may or may not be ok. My dad is a farmer and he still thinks it is ok, though he always treated out chooks much better than that. In fact he refuses to buy free-range on principle to this day!

I hope very much that Addie will grow up learning utter respect for animals - even if we are farming them for their flesh or other produce. I think that over all, my parents did a good job of that. I never saw them hurt, neglect or abuse an animal, and they tried to teach me to care for my animals well [even if it meant going out in the freezing cold to cut grass for my rabbits]. 

My desire is that Addie [and our subsequent children] will make good food choices about farmed animals, and choose the free range bacon, free ranged chicken and free ranged eggs - even if it costs her more and she has to eat less of them.  As a child I was taught many proverbs and this one resounds loudly every time I think of animal issues and has greatly shaped how I think and act. 

A righteous man cares for the needs of his animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. 

 -Proverbs 12:10 {The Christian Scriptures}