Pickle (above) has just had her third birthday with me. Of course, she doesn't look like this anymore. True, she still has a lampshade shaped comb, but aside from that you wouldn't recognise her with her plush brown feathers and her ruddy red comb.
I got her three years ago from the lovely people at the British Hen Welfare Trust www.bhwt.org.uk/and neither of us has looked back since. Nor have any of the other girls who've been rehomed with me over the years and have gone on to lead the sort of life I fantasise about: nice organic food and plenty of it, spring water, afternoon treats interspersed with bathing, preening, sunbathing, a regular pedicure and generally lolling about. What's not to love ?
Of course, it hasn't always been this way. Prior to rehoming, Pickle lived in a battery cage the size of a piece of A4 paper, she was pecked my her fellow inmates until she had no more feathers left. She arrived covered in septicleans due to injury and for weeks she screamed and ran whenever another chicken came near her. She is habitually greedy due, presumably, to having to eat what food was left when the dominant birds had finished and as a result on the first day of access to unlimited food filled her crop so full that it extended around her shoulder.
It begs the question. Would you eat an egg that came out of something that looked like this ?
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