A local farmer here can't get enough for his old birds to cover the cost of transport, so IMHO anyone paying the farmer anything for his old hens is actually encouraging battery farming by making it more profitable. anything
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...Then add to that the fact that the 'rescued' chickens have run the full term of their imprisonment. It's hardly rescue when they've already done maximum time. :x
My advice to anyone who is against battery farming is to get young birds with their best laying years ahead of them, and give them a good life from day one. After all, the more eggs they supply, the fewer will be bought from industrial suppliers.
I'm sort of with Woodburner on this one ... in fact it's something I've been thinking about a lot myself, particularly seeing a number of posts recently talking about thousands of birds at a time being rescued.
I'm all for giving any living creature the best possible life it can have, and I abhor the whole battery farming regime. And I am very supportive of the BHWT's aims and the approach of working with rather than against farmers.
BUT - the only really effective way to 'rescue' ALL battery hens is to make it completely uneconomic as a business to keep birds in that way. And there's something that worries me about 'propping up' the battery system by making it possible for farmers to dispose of large numbers of birds in this way (and presumably there must be economic benefit in having them rescued rather than sending them to the soup factory or whatever, because farmers can't afford to be sentimental. I don't mean that they make money by selling rescue birds, just that it must cost them less for them to be taken away. I think :? ).
Just as an aside (and I hope you all have seen me around here enough to know that I really do just mean this as an observation) I find it interesting that this thread has to date been viewed 377 times and had 35 replies, whilst the post I put up a few days ago referring people to the Chicken Out! campaign and the opportunity to genuinely influence Tesco, the only major supermarket still refusing to go wholly freerange in its own brand products received precisely ...er...zero replies and has only been viewed around 80 times.
There's also something that worries me - though I'm genuinely not sure what, yet - about the effect of all the rescue hens coming on to the market and its effect on the breeders who have worked hard to maintain their quality standards and the health of their birds ...
And finally there is something else that worries me - that I also haven't worked through yet - about the effect on flocks generally about such large influxes of birds from unhealthy environments.
I really haven't clarified all these thoughts yet, but my instinct is that despite my natural pleasure at seeing individual birds recovering and living well, there are potential risks to the overall welfare of chickens generally by the mass rescue approach.
BTW Katt, I like your description of paganism - it sounds very appealing and balanced. If I remember rightly from long ago education, doesn't the word itself mean 'people of the countryside' or some such? Long before it got corrupted and misunderstood ...
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December 05, 2015, 09:00