When I'm not needed anymore!
(de Nederlandse versie van het verhaal van deze moederdieren is hier te lezen)
These broiler breeder hens were rescued by a couple of animal lovers in the Netherlands. This is what they wrote about Bitchy, Fluffy, Bob, Elvis, Peter Steele , Kneus, Opa'tje, Captain Jack and Bijbal:
"It was the beginning of March 2010 and it had been freezing. Friends of ours were walking with their dogs when they found a group of chickens in the grass. Three were already dead, while the rest were only just alive.
They took the seven survivors home where we picked up three of them to take care of. They were in a very bad condition, had almost no feathers on their body and they could hardly walk. They smelt terrible.
We seperated a bit of the garden
with chicken mesh and the very same day bought a chicken coop on the
internet. We hurried to our local pet shop for essential information
on how to keep chickens and, of course, food and bowls. Once
everything was sorted, the ladies could check out their new
residence. They walked around really slowly and sometimes they fell
over. It was such a pathetic sight.
But
after a few days they made great progress and now they're the most
beautiful chickens in the world, scratching around happily in the
sand and running without falling over.
A few weeks ago (April 2010), we
found another bunch of chickens dumped in the same place, nine of
them drowned and dead in the ditch. Three were still alive. Again we
took them with us and found a new home for them with acquaintances.
We
reported everything to the police and the RSPCA here in Holland. They
said they would look into it but after two weeks the chicken corpses
were still in the ditch. Very unpleasant!
So we regularly
went to the dump site and found that more chickens had been dumped since.
Some were still alive. We immediately phoned the animal ambulance/rescue to ask them if they could pick them up. Because I was a bit suspicious, I went back that evening and
discovered that they were still there. We called the animal
ambulance/rescue again to ask why they had not been picked up. They
could not tell me why nor when they would get picked up. We got angry
and I said I would arrange it myself.
I subsequently contacted the
police and the Council. In the end I told the Council that I was
going to pick up the chickens
myself because they otherwise would not survive the night. The
Council was then going to arrange for the animal ambulance to pick up
the chickens from me the next day. In the dark, I collected the
chickens and put them in our barn for the night. Unfortunately for
one hen our help was too late. That evening I was called back by the
animal ambulance to say that they no longer would come to collect the
hens because now I had tampered with the evidence!
Now
I was really annoyed! The next day I grabbed my pen and wrote a letter of
complaint to the animal rescue. I bet that if it had been puppies
they would have come straight away. Eventually my friend and I decided to keep the
chickens and again we bought a hen house. We put all the ladies together
and hoped for the best.
We're now a number of weeks later and the
ladies (apart from two) are doing fine. They are growing back their feathers and
look well-fed. We even have to limit their food otherwise they would eat
continually. We took one chicken to the vet with a swelling on her
leg and another has an infection of her eyes (one is totally closed): she is now
kept apart and is on antibiotics.
The nice thing is that the first "batch" gets on very well with the second "batch". So we wouldn't have had to buy the second coop after all. They now use it for laying their eggs.
Some of them are laying an egg
every day!
In the meantime we've contacted the local Party of the Animals and they are going to raise this story at a Council meeting. I am very curious to see what comes out of it! I have also been in contact with the animal ambulance of Tiel, and they have promised me that if there are any more chickens I can call them and they will take care of them."
After a couple of months of tender loving care