At the end of a hen's most productive laying period (12-18 months) it is time to move on. The BHWT do a fantastic job of rehoming thousands of hens due for a less dignified end to their lives. But it's a big, stressful day for them, and they need some understanding. If you're thinking of getting ex-battery hens, here are a few pointers for understanding where your hens are at when they arrive home. It's been a big day for them.
Thankfully barren cages have now been outlawed in the EU (and thus the UK) as of January 2012 under EU directive 1999/74/EC. They have been replaced with "enriched cages", which are larger, and allow birds to exhibit more of their natural behaviours, such as roosting and dust-bathing. But when hens are rehomed they go from an intensive poultry unit to a small hen house in a garden in the space of 12 hours. What must that be like?
I put on my Investigative Scientist hat and found out.
Under the EU directive, enriched cages must be at least 45 cm high and provide each hen with at least 750 cm² of space; 600 cm² of this must be “usable area”, 150 cm² for a nest-box. The cage must also contain litter, perches and “claw-shortening devices”. What does it look like? It looks a bit like this...
The majority of information I found on commercial laying units was from animal welfare sites, as a lot of people are not content with the extent of the new changes. I can see their point, but I didn't think I was getting an unbiased picture, and I wanted facts. So off to the farming world I went to balance it out. A name that kept cropping up was BigDutchman, a major supplier of mechinised poultry and pork rearing equipment throughout the world. On their website you can find a spec document for the Eurovent EU (a commercial laying cage unit adhering to the new regulations) which gave me a much better idea of what their living conditions were like. There are obviously others, but their online material is pretty good.
There are a number of things I took from this. Firstly - the floor isn't solid, it's a wire mesh so droppings and waste feed can drop though onto a conveyor belt that removes it to keep things clean. Chickens produce a lot of poop, and trample it everywhere so I can how this would be good - if uncomfortable on the feet. Secondly, the floor slopes so eggs will roll out of the cage to the collection point. Personally I'd find this disorientating but I'm not a chicken, so who knows. There are areas that provide for basic chickeny needs - food and water, the ability to forage, roost and lay. Whether this is completely sufficient for their innate needs is another matter for another time.
The main thing that struck me was that this enclosure is much, much larger than what they're now living in: 27m2 versus our 9 m2 (though they'll discover another 5.4 m2 when they learn how to get back up the ramp into the roost box). We definitely give them more personal space, but they don't have the same overall roaming range. On the girl's first day out in the run a couple of them kept trying to get beyond the chicken wire: this is probably why.
They're also used to hanging out with a lot more chickens. The smallest enriched cage is for 20 hens (max 72) and the girls are now just a gang of four (I keep hoping they weren't separated from their best buddies, *sniff*). Further perusal of the document made me aware that these cages can be stacked 12 tiers high. In a fully stocked unit that is a LOT of hens! And a lot of hens means a LOT of noise. I wouldn't be surprised if the girls wondered if they'd suddenly gone deaf. It must have been a sensory nightmare.
I was also aware that day and night are completely artificial in commercial units. Lighting mimics spring daylight (18:6 hours light:dark) when their laying is at its peak - so our chooks went from spring to deep autumn in one day! I was also aware that their combs are so big and floppy because they'd previoiusly been pretty toasty. I've worried a lot in the past few days about the effect the sudden drop in temperature would have on a bunch of semi-feathered hens previously unaware of the outside world.
So is this life better for them? My gut says yes, as their life now is much closer to their natural habitat. In time they'll be allowed to free range during the day, and as our front garden is something of a jungle it will be even closer to their natural habitat! But it is definitely a shock for them. They've gone from a warm, populous, noisy environment to a cold, sparse, quiet one. Long light days were swapped for gloomy short ones. They may be nearer to the life nature intended, but I do wonder if they're thanking me for it right now!
It's for all these reasons that the BHWT recommend that you keep the hens calm and quiet in their coop for their first few days, and have an excellent "Care of ex-bats" page.
I hope this gives you some insight into the living conditions of battery hens. If you are thinking of getting some ex-bats or already have some, I'd love to hear your questions and stories. Please comment below!
Bee x
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