Keeping Chickens Newsletter

• Beaks : The first and most obvious issue is that of a trimmed beak. In the battery system, a hen will be debeaked by a hot machine knife. A debeaking is permanent, but in the majority of cases it will not affect your new hens ability to peck about - if for some reason it did, then mash rather than pellets as her feed would help her (and it is probably what she would have been used to). Food and water dishes may need to be a little deeper to allow for trimmed beaks.
  
  
• Toe nails : Having lived on a wire floor for so long there is a good chance that they will have very long toe nails; while they will usually wear down on their own, if the length is excessive, you can and should trim them.
  
  
• Missing Feathers : You'll also find that battery hens will often have some feathers missing - particularly around their neck due to the repetitive action of reaching through a feeder fence to get to their trough of food. Boredom and neighbours are other causes of featherless patches.

Although the above issues could have led to pain and infection in some of the hens, it is very unlikely that you will be given one that has any major problems (as far as possible re-homing organisations will always do their best to only pass on healthy ones). Most issues will be aesthetic and resolved relatively quickly with a few weeks of 'the good life'!

When you consider the life that the battery hen has become used to (in fact the only one she has ever known), it is easy to see how her new life outside of the cage may seem quite bewildering to her. It will be the first time she has walked about, pecked for bugs, seen the sky, felt grass (or straw or mud) under her feet, dust bathed etc. etc. Everything will be new - and probably scary. This may result in a very timid bird, or it could even cause her to be a little aggressive. She could "flop around," as if unsure how to use her limbs. She may not want to move around a lot, and it can take a