merlina Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Have people seen this? http://www.nuneaton-news.co.uk/New-owners-needed-home-thousands-hens/story-21461688-detail/story.html What are the regulations the story mentions? I thought this was just a commercial decision (the 'can only keep the hens for 12 months bit) Why isn't this place going through one of the rehoming charities? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pottage Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Because the farmer is exploitive. I saw this on Twitter last week, and there has been some discussion on it on the British Hen Welfare Trusts' Facebook page. The farmer has obviously looked into rescue girls online and sees how much the re homing organizations charge and thinks he can make a quick buck as that's what people are prepared to pay. Never mind the excess from whatever the charity asks for will go towards the treatment of the sickest hens. This makes me *very* angry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavclojak Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 What an Oooops...word censored!! Did you notice the use of emotive words like...'save' 'slaughter' 'rescue' 'dedicated opening times' 'can only keep them for 12 months....should read...they will only give me the maximum amount of eggs for 12 months then after that I want rid..... what a complete......just another way to exploit these poor girls...just when I thought things might be getting better too.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pottage Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 An extract of the Tweet - “The farmer is really nice and really doesn’t want them to end up as pie filling…”. It's blatant exploitation and an attempt to tug at our heart strings. If he was so nice, and so keen to see the girls saved, then why is he asking for 5 times the amount he would get if they go to slaughter? He is an utter (insert your own choice of word here). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 Hear hear, what a rotter he is how dare he try to sell himself as a good samaritan. If he was open and honest about trying to make more money from selling the hens as pets than as meat I would not mind but to try to claim himself a hen hero bah humbug. There is a free range egg farm local to me who are fabby as they advertise their "used" hens at under £3 generally, they certainly don't use a sob story. I love our egg farm they are chicken bonkers and have many community events and open days on site. There have been a couple of times that rogues have tried to steal hens by running across the A38, the farm is so well thought of that motorists alerted the farm to the crimes and did all they safely could to track the movements of the rogues. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timebandit Posted July 21, 2014 Share Posted July 21, 2014 I doubt this farmer is any worse than the multitude of commercial chicken farmers out there, all livestock farming is exploitive. If he had offered the hens for much less than the price of a supermarket frozen chicken, some people would have bought them to stick in the freezer, which would also have brought criticism. The BHWT only seem to rescue caged birds and the smaller rescues couldn't cope with the thousands that come from (barn?)farms like this one. If you check out the photos via the facebook page below, you can see that the hens look similar in condition to caged birds. It seems several thousand were not saved. There are links in the conversation on this facebook page to photographs of the farm & some birds being rescued. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Hillside-Animal-Sanctuary/135561519840094?hc_location=timeline Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beantree Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Our local free range farm sells the 'spent' hens for £1 each and doesn't advertise. Someone told me they made a profit at that because for cat and dog food the hens were only worth 50p. I was surprised at them being worth that much. I doubt anyone would want to eat them. They will be a tough as old boots and need a lot of boiling. What people don't generally realise is that the cheap supermarket chicken and chicken products are from birds slaughtered at 5½ weeks. Our vet was making a health visit to a Commercial farm with some trainee vets. Called in to see us first so the trainees could appreciate both ends of the Poultry keeping spectrum. The next place had 200,000 chickens for meat production! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavclojak Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 IThe BHWT only seem to rescue caged birds and the smaller rescues couldn't cope with the thousands that come from (barn?)farms like this on I can assure you BHWT rehome from caged,barn and free-range sources,!!! I volunteer for BHWT and have taken hens from all three situations, we have gone in to huge scale colony units and have taken a couple of thousand hens and the much smaller farms who have a few hundred birds, and have been lucky enough to be able to take every single bird. The difference is BHWT work WITH farmers not against, the farmers are not the enemy!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
timebandit Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 I agree gavclojak, the farmer is not the enemy. Regarding the BHWT, obviously I take your word regarding where the hens are rescued from but if you read the FB post about this particular farm, it does give the impression that caged birds are rescued in preference to others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gavclojak Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 I can 100% guarantee, with BHWT, there is no preferential treatment given to caged hens over any other hens, its about availability of hens/owners and time...we are governed by when the hens would be going to slaughter and how many are on the re homing list. We had a barn rehoming recently and managed to take every hen, unfortunately due to the sheer numbers in the colony unit it feels like we only take a fraction.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
