Shadrach's Ex Battery and Rescued chickens thread.

[Shadrach]

As far as I can gather from speaking to someone who has been on one of these Ex Batt rescue missions it works something like this.
A rescue group contact the owner/manager of the battery and volunteer to take a number of hens.
The resue team arrive with transport and cages (?) and transport the hens to their base. Suposedly any that look very sick are kept at the rescue groups location. In some circumstances some of the rescues are moved as quickly as possible to volunteer holding centers and the public collect hens from these places. Doubtless there are variations but that's the basic idea.

Say, as Pear Tree Farm for example state, they rescue 2000 hens in one rescue mission. The math and logistics is quite interesting.
Each hen needs 100 grams of feed per day.
20 hens need 2 Kilos per day
200 hens need 20 Kilos per day
2000 hens need 200 Kilos per day
200 kilos divided by 20 (a bag of feed is usually 20 Kilo) equals 10 bags of feed per day.
At roughly £15.00 per 20 Kilo bag that's £150.00 per day just to feed them.
Keep the hens for a week and the feed bill is £1050.00 per week.

You'll be needing a big coop and if as some places including Pear Tree Farm state all their hens are examined by a vet before rehoming you'll need a very very fast vet. What does the vet check for I can't help wondering and how many can a vet check properly in a day?

Some hens with a bit of pre rescue publicity will be collected on day one I imagine but I have no idea how many.

The only way I can see this working is by rehoming the hens as quickly as possible.

 

[Shadrach]

These girls are the reason I won't do ex batts again. I don't have the emotional strength to see them fight so hard to get well only to die before they really have a chance to enjoy their lives.

I don't have any pictures @ present but briefly: a friend & I went into chickens together & picked up 2 dozen ISA browns that were due to be culled from the local chicken shed @ the end of summer. She also got a rooster: the meanest, badest rooster there ever was. He was so awful the girls actually eventually killed him but that is another story.

When they arrived I said they looked like they were ready for the oven. Most were pretty bare & basically skin & bone. Most high stepped to start with. They had no idea about grass or dirt & I think they were cold. They spent a lot of time sunbathing on the bricks. They were too weak & subdued to engage in flock disputes & I actually never had any trouble with them that way. They laid from the day they arrived until the day they died.

At the time we were about the only house on 50 acres so the girls were allowed to free range as they wished. Most didn't wander too far from the house. They did pretty well through winter & feathered out nicely but when our hot weather arrived they started dropping like flies. There were plenty of places to get out of the heat but they were 3+ by then & well past their use by date. None of my girls had internal or egg laying issues. I didn't know about beak triming but can't recall any issues the girls had eating or preening. It was my first time owning chickens so there was probably a lot I missed but I do know once they started feeling better & were used to their new routine they were enjoying their lives.

I think a lot of the people who take in Ex Batts are first time chicken keepers who take them in out of the kindness of their hearts only to find out that it isn't all sunshine and roses as the rescue organisations would have you beliieve.

 

[MaryJanet]

As far as I can gather from speaking to someone who has been on one of these Ex Batt rescue missions it works something like this.
A rescue group contact the owner/manager of the battery and volunteer to take a number of hens.
The resue team arrive with transport and cages (?) and transport the hens to their base. Suposedly any that look very sick are kept at the rescue groups location. In some circumstances some of the rescues are moved as quickly as possible to volunteer holding centers and the public collect hens from these places. Doubtless there are variations but that's the basic idea.

Say, as Pear Tree Farm for example state, they rescue 2000 hens in one rescue mission. The math and logistics is quite interesting.
Each hen needs 100 grams of feed per day.
20 hens need 2 Kilos per day
200 hens need 20 Kilos per day
2000 hens need 200 Kilos per day
200 kilos divided by 20 (a bag of feed is usually 20 Kilo) equals 10 bags of feed per day.
At roughly £15.00 per 20 Kilo bag that's £150.00 per day just to feed them.
Keep the hens for a week and the feed bill is £1050.00 per week.

You'll be needing a big coop and if as some places including Pear Tree Farm state all their hens are examined by a vet before rehoming you'll need a very very fast vet. What does the vet check for I can't help wondering and how many can a vet check properly in a day?

Some hens with a bit of pre rescue publicity will be collected on day one I imagine but I have no idea how many.

The only way I can see this working is by rehoming the hens as quickly as possible.

Mark spends 5-10 minutes examining a hen with no health problems (that is, a simple check up). He must've spent around 2 hours diagnosing and advising Peggy's hepatic lipidosis, plus various equipment, nursing staff, surgical consumables etc.

Working at full speed, that's 12 hens per hour. Full speed for ten hours, we're at 120 hens

 

[Sally PB]

Seems unlikely that the vast majority would be adopted so quickly, but .

I don't know if the local eggery adopts out their spent hens, but I know I could never go look at them. I'd cry, start screaming, or take them all home.

They have a couple of signs saying they're hiring. "Love the egg. Respect the hen." is one of them.

 

[Shadrach]

Mark spends 5-10 minutes examining a hen with no health problems (that is, a simple check up). He must've spent around 2 hours diagnosing and advising Peggy's hepatic lipidosis, plus various equipment, nursing staff, surgical consumables etc.

Thanks MJ.
I had all ready come to the conclusion that the vet check went something like;
it's standing and can walk, It's fit enough to move on.

 

[Ribh]

I think a lot of the people who take in Ex Batts are first time chicken keepers who take them in out of the kindness of their hearts only to find out that it isn't all sunshine and roses as the rescue organisations would have you beliieve.

We went that way because we didn't have a lot of money & they were cheap.

 

[Shadrach]

We went that way because we didn't have a lot of money & they were cheap.

I admire your honesty. I was going to mention later on that some people who take in rescues do it for exactly the reasons you stated. On the face of it they look like a cheap way of getting eggs. Not really what the rescue ideal is all about though is it if one believes the publicity.

 

[Ribh]

As far as I can gather from speaking to someone who has been on one of these Ex Batt rescue missions it works something like this.
A rescue group contact the owner/manager of the battery and volunteer to take a number of hens.
The resue team arrive with transport and cages (?) and transport the hens to their base. Suposedly any that look very sick are kept at the rescue groups location. In some circumstances some of the rescues are moved as quickly as possible to volunteer holding centers and the public collect hens from these places. Doubtless there are variations but that's the basic idea.

Say, as Pear Tree Farm for example state, they rescue 2000 hens in one rescue mission. The math and logistics is quite interesting.
Each hen needs 100 grams of feed per day.
20 hens need 2 Kilos per day
200 hens need 20 Kilos per day
2000 hens need 200 Kilos per day
200 kilos divided by 20 (a bag of feed is usually 20 Kilo) equals 10 bags of feed per day.
At roughly £15.00 per 20 Kilo bag that's £150.00 per day just to feed them.
Keep the hens for a week and the feed bill is £1050.00 per week.

You'll be needing a big coop and if as some places including Pear Tree Farm state all their hens are examined by a vet before rehoming you'll need a very very fast vet. What does the vet check for I can't help wondering and how many can a vet check properly in a day?

Some hens with a bit of pre rescue publicity will be collected on day one I imagine but I have no idea how many.

The only way I can see this working is by rehoming the hens as quickly as possible.

The one place I know who does rescues around here takes preorders & only get the number of hens they have homes for, with perhaps a few extra. They let people know & the hens get picked up the same day. They are quite strict about it from what I've seen. Some places you can buy directly from the farmer from his about to culls.

 

[MaryJanet]

Thanks MJ.
I had all ready come to the conclusion that the vet check went something like;
it's standing and can walk, It's fit enough to move on.

With no record keeping, which would be highly unprofessional. Record keeping takes time.

 

[MaryJanet]

Thanks MJ.
I had all ready come to the conclusion that the vet check went something like;
it's standing and can walk, It's fit enough to move on.

Also, you don't need a vet for that type of observation.

I think they might be counting the egg farm's use of a flock vet as their own "vet checking".