Chickens in Need - Please Help by Donating

If you've ever seen an ex-battery, or now so called enriched cage hen, you will know what a very sad state and sorry most are in.  Thanks to many large supermarket chains still wanting to sell cheap eggs and the people that actually still buy them (but don't get me started on that)! 

Picture supplied by Lucky Hens Rescue Wigan.

Without these rescue places the hens would be killed at around 18 months when they don't produce eggs at the rate they are expected to.

Lucky Hens Rescue in Wigan is one of many places that rescue these poor hens and re-home them.  The cost of keeping the hens and looking after them in the meantime is getting harder to do with everyone tightening up on their spending.  

 Just £1 from everyone that reads this would make such a difference:

That's why I've decided that instead of sending Christmas cards this year, I will donate to 'Chickens in Need'.  But this is not just a Christmas thing as they need money coming in all year round.

The idea of 'Chickens in Need' was thought up by FaceBook Group members, Re-homers and Friends of Lucky Hens Rescue Wigan. 

To read more and to donate (remember just a £1 would be great) pop over to 'Chickens in Need.'

A big thank you in advance to anyone that does donate and help Lucky Hens Wigan stay open x 

Rehoming ex Battery Hens and a Lot of Eggs!

I have always wanted chickens!  We only have a small garden but one thing you can be sure of these hens will be looked after and let out every day without fail.  Just look at the colour of a Free Range egg and they taste really good too!

  I only ever buy free range eggs and can't get my head around why lots of people still choose to buy the ones from battery hens.  I think if people took a little time to read about the terrible conditions in which these poor hens are kept they would buy free range, or not buy eggs at all if they find them too expensive. 

Don't get me wrong we certainly aren't made of money but when you consider the small price free range eggs are (at the time of writing) a typical box of six medium free range eggs is around £1.60 in the UK which is twice the price of the battery eggs.

As this is a food blog I will not go too much into how these poor hens are kept - but you only have to Google 'battery hens' to see what I'm talking about.  They're kept in a space no bigger than a piece of A4 paper.

Some of the images of ex battery hens would make you cry.

Anyway, that said we decided to re-home two ex battery hens along with a Black Rock hen from an amazing woman called Sarah over at Happy Chicks.

Sarah and her husband buy as many ex battery hens as they can re-home so you can always buy them from her straight away without going on a waiting list as is usual.

I'll be writing regular blog posts on how the hens are doing - along with the Eglu we brought from Omlet for them to live in.  We had 15 eggs in the past week so I'm now into cooking up all things egg!  By the way the egg in the picture above is Roxy's egg. 

Here are the hens (Mrs Tweedy, Mrs Hen and Roxy) with Yaz the cat watching.

You can just see Brian the bunny at the back having a nose too.
Yes we have a right farm going on here!

 Just a few of the many ex battery hens at Happy Chicks waiting for a new home.  Some are in a rather poor state with feathers missing and bare bottoms!  But they will soon recover with a lots of love and some good food!

I'll leave you with a short video of Mrs Hen having some sort of clear out of straw - she's so funny!