Your views and possibly your help please

[Dobby]

I hope you do adopt some ex battery hens, if you do for the eggs get 2 now 2 next year then 2 the year after (or something like that) otherwise they will all get old and stop laying at the same time. Also lock them up at night, foxes get everywhere. After the intitial culure shock ex battery hens settle down to enjoy freedom. We signed up both petitions.

Fantastic

(and sound advice too)

 

[Munkul]

i dont know how much you know about this, dobby, but in relation to renegade's advice, dont be surprised if, when you get them, they are still laying, give them maybe a week or so and they stop laying altogether. then, IIRC, another few weeks and they start laying again :idea:
thats our experience with them, anyway

 

[Dobby]

i dont know how much you know about this, dobby, but in relation to renegade's advice, dont be surprised if, when you get them, they are still laying, give them maybe a week or so and they stop laying altogether. then, IIRC, another few weeks and they start laying again :idea:
thats our experience with them, anyway

i've heard it can be a bit hit and miss so we're prepared for that but its more about giving them a happy retirement home really

 

[Renegade_8]

Battery hens are usually sold at about 1 year old when they are due their first feather moult. Often this is induced by a change in the time the lights are left on for. Most of them are then killed horribly after a short stressful and unnatural life being manipulated to produce as many eggs as possible. In moult they do not lay (which is why they are killed then) so it will depend what the battery has done to them before you get them. They do come out of moult and will lay happily for many more years between natural moults. The reason I suggested buying 2 a year is that they will live on for a year or two after they stop laying eggs and I imagine you would just keep them as pets in their retirement while the newer flock members take over egg provision duties.
The hens will be commercial hyrids bred for egg laying rate on minimum food so cannot be shown and will not have the looks of something like an exhbition standard Rhode Island Red, but they will really deserve some decent treatment after what they have been through. Let us know how you get on.