Morning......, although I did get a little more sleep last night I feel like a zombie this morning. In 12 hours time I will just have arrived home again. Uuuhhhhhhhhh.
The mist from last night has dissipated although the grass is glistening with dampness. Our hens have realised there is no escape this morning and are huddled together at the far end of the run. How can battery chickens have any decent life (the answer is, they can't) living in a space the size of an A4 piece of paper, standing on racks and feeding from conveyor belts? It's no wonder they get stressed. I feel guilty when our hens are left in their run which is probably big enough to advertise as an eight chicken run. Battery hens are normally changed after their first year of production, when their egg laying is at it's most frequent. After that they are usually crated up and sold to restaurants for mass market meals. You can approach the farmer to see if you can buy chickens from them once they have finished with them. You'll still get regular eggs and with a bit of attention the feathers soon grow back and their combs perk back up. For between 50 pence to two pounds a hen you can get a good few years of life (and eggs) from them. Much better for the pocket and conscience than buying expensive, less productive breeds but each to his own. We started swith pretty chickens but their egg laying is irregular to say the least. Ah well, time to leave for work. The sun has baked off the morning mist and it promises to be a sunny day; shame not to be out in the garden - for me and the hens. We're all lucky though that we aren't confined to a tiny space with no natural light. Our chicks have a pretty good lifestyle and when we bite into an orange-hued omelette made with superbly fresh eggs they pay us back tenfold.
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