A private home in Hazelbrook was the scene for a mass re-homing of 300 ex-battery hens on Sunday March 18.
About 50 Blue Mountains residents offered to take anything from two to 10 hens each, with almost 300 hens delivered from a van driven down from the Hunter Valley.
Thanks to the powers of social media, the Hawkesbury-based group Polite Pets issued a call out for help on their Facebook post. It was called “Let the Ladies Go – Chicken Rescue” and later went viral through the Blue Mountains Community Social Group page.
Deb Lowe from Polite Pets said the community response to the release of the 18-month-old Isa Brown hens from their battery farm was heartwarming. Another release was imminent and interested residents could contact her via the Polite Pets Facebook page.
“The response was good. People were lining up [to collect the hens] – one of the first things I did was give an egg to a little girl as the hens were still laying in the van,” Ms Lowe said.
The chickens were settling in well to their new spacious digs all around the Mountains.
“We’ve already got messages from people saying how much they adore them, one was singing a chook to sleep that first night,” Ms Lowe said. “They [the rescued hens] do seem a bit daunted in an open space but we’ve got messages they are already digging and scratching.”
Most of the residents who picked up the free chickens gave money or food for the next batch of rescued hens, she added.
In the past month, Ms Lowe from Bilpin, has helped 870 ex-battery hens find new homes around the Mountains and the Hawkesbury region. One of only a few volunteers involved in the action, Ms Lowe did not want to disclose which farms the chooks had come from.
“We took a horse float up and collected the first batch of chickens. I love chickens, I’m always big on helping … my son and I have a motto, ‘Helping one heart beat just a little bit longer, just a little bit stronger’,” she said.
Sandie Brown, who also volunteered with the project said because the hens were only recently removed from battery facilities, they “were not centrefold girls … but will bounce back in a matter of weeks”.
Last month Jenny McLeod, who lives on acreage in Sun Valley, also helped with the rehoming of the 500 “scruffy” battery hens in Richmond. She also took 10 home.
In the appeal for others to take the hens, Mrs McLeod and others said: “Some of my hen’s feathers are already starting to grow back … there are literally thousands of hens needing to be rehomed, so pass the word around”.
Mrs McLeod did not believe the Blue Mountains had been the site for a mass rehoming before.
“I don’t think it’s happened before [but] Mountains people are so compassionate and they love animal so I’m not surprised by the response,” Mrs McLeod said.
”There are a lot of petitions to get chickens out of battery laying conditions and some are being shutdown .. a privacy disclosure meant they couldn’t reveal where they had come from.”
Mrs McLeod said the chooks were “so used to such terrible cramped conditions, they were still laying eggs in the truck adapted with three layers of wires that they were being brought in”.
She said many rescued chooks would need to stay in their coop for about a week to build up strength again in their legs.
Blue Mountains Council has a limit of a dozen chickens per residential property.
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