When you want to change your life

When everything in your life sucks, you feel there is no way out. You feel too stressed and depressed, gradually closing your mind from anything and everything around you.

What if you were borne in the horrible situation and have lived there for all your life? You probably wouldn’t know how horrible the situation is. Tremendous stress and depression are so common and you probably don’t realize that you have closed your mind a long time ago.

I came across such lives very close to me. No, it’s not human lives, but battery hens’.

Battery hens live in too distressing circumstances for most consumers. They have to endure good years of their lives in the overcrowded, stressful conditions. The cages (I’d call them hell jails) are often stacked vertically very high. Each hen has the living space of around A4 paper only. The floors are wire-made slopes which are not only uncomfortable but also often make hens cripple their feet and legs. There is no way to stop their toe nails growing in the wire cages, which can cause them tangled in the wire, unable to feed themselves and doomed to die. Lots of feathers are missing especially around their necks because they have to constantly put their head through the wire bars to get food or drink. When they are not hungry, they pick their feathers from boredom or stress. Sometimes their neighbor hens pick feathers each other for the same reason or worse, they go for cannibalism, picking each other till bleed. The factory farmer’s solution to the feather picking and cannibalism is ‘debeaking’, cutting the tip of their beak off. Debeaking is extremely painful and the pain may last for the rest of their lives.

Hens don’t have to be happy to lay eggs. They lay eggs by a biological function.

I found out about these poor hens when I was researching on raising hens in the backyard. As a part of my sustainable living project, I want hens. Raising hens is a fantastic way to recycle kitchen scraps, reduce weeding time in the garden, create organic fertilizer and of course for their eggs to eat. In my research, I found four ways to get hens, 1.Fertile Eggs, 2. day-old chicks, 3.Pullets and 4. Ex-battery hen adoption. I’ve never heard about adopting ex-battery hens so I continued to read about it.

Then, the truth came out… I cried.

What miserable life they have! I also disgusted myself by not knowing the truth and had been buying caged eggs for my stupid sake of saving money! What I had been doing was encouraging more of those pitiful lives!!

I decided to adopt ex-battery hens.

With the battery hen adoption program I found in my area, hens are rescued a few days before they would have been slaughtered. They still have a good year of laying left, and all hens have a quick health check before adoption. The hens don’t have a set price but a donation is asked to keep the program going. They might look miserable because they’ve lost so many feathers, but the feathers grow back within a month also, and they are intelligent enough to adapt to a new life (I’d say a real life!!). They make wonderful companion animals and are very social creatures so even if I don’t get eggs, I’d be happy to keep them around as pets. The best of all, I’d feel good about giving them the second chance at life!!

I’ve been busy planning this hen adoption since. I bought a feeder and a drinker so that I can build a chicken coop and get the new happy home ready for two hens. I’m still reading lots of books on how to look after them, preferably in their natural way. I want to have good amount of knowledge before my new pets arrive. Meantime, I only buy free range eggs, no more cage eggs. My plan is progressing very well. I’ve never been so determined to have animals! Maybe, the chickens are changing my life too.

Hang in there chickens!! It won’t be too long till I rescue you!!