Photo of new chicken, Clara, by Jo Barlow As any owner of ex-batts will tell you, you can never have enough ex-batt hens. These quirky girls are completely addictive and your first flock will no doubt quickly double or treble in size with your new additions. Eighteen...
Photo of Beaky by Emma Osborne According to recent media reports, Britain has gone from a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of chicken keepers. Some 700,000 of us Brits are apparently enjoying the delights of keeping hens. The British Hen Welfare Trust has had a hectic media...
Battery farming has a terrible effect on chickens. Photo of Charlotte on Rescue Day by Amy Chamberlain. A recent study by the University of Bristol’s Animal Welfare and Behavior Research Group has found that mother hens show signs of “clear physiological and behavioral...
Photo by Jo Barlow We have recently reached a very important milestone down here in Cornwall. Our chicken, Audrey, celebrated her first free-range year out of the battery cage. This is a massive achievement for her, and for us. This time last year I had never even held a...
Photo by Photojournalis Alton Stupp via flickr The recent events in Indonesia where animal welfare group, Animals Australia, filmed footage of Australian cows being brutally treated by abattoir workers, has caused such an outcry in Australia that the government has suspended...
Photo of Sophie Mccoy When I enthuse about the merits of ex-batts, their quirky natures, their sustainability and their sheer gorgeousness, many of you reply with the same comment. That much as you would like to have ex-batts, but you are not able to have chickens in your...
The free-range girls with their coop and nest box. Photo by Jo Barlow. When our little chicken, Audrey, was entombed in her battery cage she was subjected to 18 hours artificial daylight to encourage her to lay an egg every day. This unnatural level of production made her...
Canadian seal slaughter protest. Photo by alezarg via flickr The Canadian seal cull is a completely abhorrent practice, more suited to a video nasty than a legal activity. It can surely only be greed that motivates these ‘men’ to butcher and murder these babies. However,...
Photo of Agatha. By Jo Barlow. There comes a time, even in an ex-battery hen’s life, when her wings may need to be clipped. Wing clipping is a quick and painless process of literally clipping the primary flight feathers of one wing rendering the chicken unbalanced -- and...
Photo by Paolo Camera via flickr Here in Britain, as a nation of animal lovers, we sit in our ivory towers and tutt indignantly at the animal rights record of other countries. We righteously recoil in horror at the Canadian annual seal cull. How can they murder such beautiful...
