Yes, ChickenCanoe is right. Battery birds, at the time that I took some on, were legally allotted a space equivalent to a US letter sized piece of paper, in a cage of up to 6 birds. The cages were then sat side by side in their thousands....that's what a battery is....a battery of cages. The birds live in the cages from the age of 16 weeks to 72 weeks before being replaced by new stock. During that period, all excrement from the birds drops through the wire floor of the cages and accumulates underneath, leading to an ammonia filled stench. They are kept under artificial light and heat for 18 hours a day to maximise laying. This causes their combs to severely over-grow as they are the birds' way of cooling off and it gets very warm in those batteries. When I rescued mine, they were almost bald from stress and pecking, had huge, almost white combs, had been de-beaked and had sores and scabs on their bodies and legs. They were completely overwhelmed by their new found freedom to begin with but, with careful and sensitive, gradual exposure to the good things in life, six months later, they were stunningly gorgeous 'little red hens' and one of mine later went on to be a mama too
This is not one of mine....my pictures of them when they first arrived are on a different laptop....but this is almost identical to what mine looked like, except that mine also had half their beaks missing.
This is one of my girls, Hesta, about a year after rescue x
