This is why I don’t eat eggs at restaurants. {Don’t worry, Happy Ending}
And this is why I now want to start a chicken sanctuary!
“These are Rhode Island Red hens that spent the first 18 months of their lives in an egg-production factory farm. After 18 months the ladies are considered to be “spent” and are sent to slaughter unless they’re able to find a home like this which are unfortunately few and far between.”
Via Reddit:
“I adopt them with the help of a local farm sanctuary (These guys: http://cedarrow.org/ – give them all the money!). They run adoption drives every year and I bring home as many as I can. This year they had rhode island reds (brown hens who make the brown eggs). Last year it was leghorns (white hens, white eggs).
I do not eat the eggs but I do collect them. I let the hens eat a lot of them as well. The eggs I collect are given to anyone who requests them and they leave donations for food sometimes. They live out their lives here as pets and make excellent friends! Anyways, vegans who have reasonable space, consider adopting pet hens! They are friendly, loveable, will take care of a lot of your food waste, and even their poop is useful! Whenever a farm “cleans” out the barns, that means nearly 30,000 hens are being sent to slaughter at 18 months old – still babies imo! I can only rescue about 20 at a time and wish I could do more. Hopefully someone else out there will see this and also will be able to offer an alternative to ladies in this situation.
As for roosters, there are always tons on local classifieds facing death if they cannot find a “free to good home” situation. Not to mention the male baby chicks in the factory farm situations – heart breaking. I recommend rooster friends for your ladies too. The factory farm ladies don’t tend to be too broody so you don’t have to worry about getting overwhelmed.”
How long do they live post-adoption?
It varies of course. I just lost a hen the day before yesterday that came from a factory farm. I had her for seven/eight years which means she was about 8-10 years old. She still laid eggs for many years after I brought her home.
Of the 20 that I brought home in the last batch, I’ve had one pass away on me. Some might bring illness with them and they just might not be able to make the transition.
On average for factory farm hens, you should at least get 3-4 years out of them. They can live well over a decade.
~
Advice re rehabilitating?
I think just talking to other farmers who went through rehabilitating them might be best. I’m not sure of any books since I’ve pretty much grown up with chickens as pets. But I’ll describe what we did..
First thing was to not let them out of their house for at least 24 hours so they know to define that as their home base. Some people neglect this step and the chickens might wander off.
For the first two months or so we did not let them out of the chicken run. They only had access to their house and the fenced in space which is quite large so no worries there. This was just to get them used to the whole thing and to make sure they understood the whole part about going into the house at night time so predators don’t get at them. Once we were absolutely sure they understood that then we let them have free roam of the property. This also sort of forces them to stay within a certain distance of us whenever we go to visit so it gets them used to us.
We have a few hens and our rooster who were raised on the farm and I think having them around to emulate might have helped as well. There are also hens that we’ve rehabilitated over the last few years mixed in. Having a variety of hens at different stages can either be a bonus or a shitty situation since they may decide to pick on the new ones. My hens and my rooster, Eugene, were all awesome though.
I adopted these guys in September so aside from the cut beaks you wouldn’t know they went through what they did now.
Hens would be the best way to start with rescued farm animals since they don’t need as much space as a cow for example! 🙂 An average suburban backyard would work for three hens or so..
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