What a difference a month makes

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wafflycat

New Member
When Cathode first arrived at Chateau Wafflycat on 19 April, after having spent the first year of her life in a battery cage, her comb was pale & puffy, she had a bald patch on the top of her head, no feathers down the front of her neck (also none on her bottom and many others broken) and she would cower in fear. What a difference a month makes :ohmy:

Cathode001240508.jpg
 

Mortiroloboy

New Member
Mmmm...Broccoli, new potates, carrots, peas...and lashings of Gravy...:ohmy::biggrin:

What a pretty girl, how come cathode?
 
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wafflycat

wafflycat

New Member
I have two hens; Anode & Cathode the ex-battery hens :biggrin:

You wouldn't want to eat these two roasted - they'll be a bit stringy & tough. When batts go for slaughter, they end up in pet food and where the chicken used is low-grade, such as in pies. They go from farm to slaughter at about a year old, never having seen daylight, or been in the fresh air, or able to move much at all as the crowding in battery cages is seriously bad. Each hen only has space the size of an A4 sheet of paper to live in. At about a year old, they are sent for slaughter as they are viewed as 'egged out' meaning they don't produce eggs regularly enough to be commercially viable. Saying that, my two, since 19 April, have given me 39 eggs to date and as I type this, Cathode is on the way to producing another by the look of the way she's hunkering down on the straw in the hen house. :ohmy:
 

Mortiroloboy

New Member
You're a very lovely kind person :biggrin: how thoughtful taking a a 'retired' battery hen in and giving her a happy comfortable life, and getting some chicken berries into the bargain.:ohmy:
 
are these your first??- a friend of mine used to have about ten hens while i was at school, its amazing how much better the eggs tasted than even the "best" bought ones...- and you get so many double yolkers!- because theyre usually taken out at farms because theyre too big to fit in the boxes, nowadays, another friend gets given these "too big" ones free from a free range farm for exactly that reason!- amazing because theyre the best ones in my opinion..
 
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wafflycat

wafflycat

New Member
User259iroloboy said:
You're a very lovely kind person :biggrin: how thoughtful taking a a 'retired' battery hen in and giving her a happy comfortable life, and getting some chicken berries into the bargain.:ohmy:

Thank you :biggrin:

The girls are great fun and I'd recommend to just about anyone to have a couple of hens as they take very little looking after. Got my two from the Battery Hen Welfare Trust, for the princely sum of 50p a hen!

Cathode has laid another egg for me at 11.30 this morning, so that's number 40 in total!

Egg40Cathode24050847point9g.jpg
 
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wafflycat

wafflycat

New Member
PatrickPending said:
So I take it you are now an expert at making omletts :ohmy:

Aye!
 
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wafflycat

wafflycat

New Member
dantheman said:
are these your first??- a friend of mine used to have about ten hens while i was at school, its amazing how much better the eggs tasted than even the "best" bought ones...- and you get so many double yolkers!- because theyre usually taken out at farms because theyre too big to fit in the boxes, nowadays, another friend gets given these "too big" ones free from a free range farm for exactly that reason!- amazing because theyre the best ones in my opinion..

These are my first hens. And yes, the eggs really do taste much better than any shop bought ones (and I only ever buy organic free-range ones in a shop due to the higher welfare standards) as shop bought are already a week old by the time they get to the shop. The difference between a shop bought egg and one laid that day is *amazing* and I wouldn't have believed it unless I'd tasted it for myself.

The texture of a really fresh egg is wonderful - very silky and the flavour is much richer. The home produced eggs make wonderful poached eggs as the white stays so much closer to the yolk. But if you want a *hard-boiled* egg, don't use a properly fresh one as they are a b*gg*r to peel the shell from - the white stays attached and is layered. For a decent hard-boiled egg the egg need to be older, when the white has 'thinned' and doesn't come away still attached to the shell. But if you want a really tasty soft-boiled egg to have with your bread & butter soldiers, the really fresh egg from your own laydeez is the way to go. :ohmy:

I haven't had any double-yolkers yet, but the girls are giving me about 5-6 eggs a week each, which is not bad going for a hen that's supposed to be 'egged out' and it makes you wonder just what they have to produce to be considered commercially viable.

Saying that, whichever farmer my two came from, he/she is okay, as only Cathode was debeaked and then only the tiniest amount. Some hens are horribly mutilated by debeaking and this wasn't the case with the bunch of hens my two came from. Plus the farmer let the BHWT rescue some of the lot that were due to go off for slaughter, so that's another plus - the fact he/she is working with the BHWT.
 

Joe24

More serious cyclist than Bonj
Location
Nottingham
My auntie got some hen a while ago. Shes got four. Cant remember the names of them. One lays Blue eggs. She sent us the first that was layed over with the first blue one, but it looks green.
Our rabbit went over because we are away for abit next week and it ended up chasing after them. They jumped ontop of the hen coop(is that how its spelt?) and wouldnt come down untill he was away.
Really good fun to watch them walking about and doing what they do. She lets them walk round the garden when they are in and at the same time vry nigt they walk themself back to the coop and settle down.
 
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wafflycat

wafflycat

New Member
The usual breed to lay blue/green eggs is the Araucana. They are very pretty eggs. I can tell which of my two has laid what egg as Anode's eggs are a much darker shade of brown to Cathode's which are a lighter creamy colour. If I was going to get more hens, I'd fgancy getting an Araucana and also a Maran or a Welsummer, as the eggs they lay are a deep chocolate brown colour... then there's something to lay white eggs... buth then there's loads of batts to be had too, and I'm a sucker for a rescue animal!
 
im ore of the "eating animals" than the "looking after animals" type of person, but admire people who look after animals like these. anything we can do to help be a little more self sufficient is good, and invariably better for you.. read an article in the paper the other week that said theres lots of fraudulent organic and free-range products out there, and even about companies adding green dye to olive oil in order to sell it as extra virgin, so it seems you cant always trust the label anyway, as i have always thought...
 
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