My friend Sue and I often say that when we are old we will giggle to
ourselves when we think of the time her husband went away for a
weekend and his parting words were “No chickens Sue, I mean it”
We were doing a battery chicken rescue at the time.
Well on the day he left for the weekend,
me and two other people went off,
loaded our cars up several times
(Oh by the way did you know that
you can get 80 chickens in a Ford Sierra estate car?)
dropped them off to homes and then halfway through the afternoon
and the last two car loads we found ourselves with a problem.
We didn’t have anywhere for the last 160 chickens.
So off to Sue’s we go for a cuppa and a think.
It was decided that we would put them in Sue’s newly decorated work room,
Dulux eggshell blue rather appropriately,
all 160 of them.
It seemed a good idea at the time.
Sue fed them, got them all settled and had the Titanic soundtrack CD playing
which seemed to soothe the chickens.
Eggs were being laid by the dozens and walked on and the room
was very rapidly becoming not as spic and span as it had been.
160 chickens seem to poo an awful lot.
Mark phones and as Sue is reassuring him that there are absolutely no
chickens in the house or aviary one of her dogs jumped up at the
stable door to the room to say hello to the clucks.
Which set them off completely.
She managed to make out that the noise they were making was a tv
programme.
The next day we go round to pick them up and as you do when
under pressure decide that a cuppa or two is in order.
An hour or so later we are still idling and Mark phones to say he’s about half an
hour away.
I don’t think three people have moved so fast in the history of man,
we had a relay system from the room to the car of protesting
chickens and boy do they take a while to catch.
We whizzed off and Sue amazingly managed to bleach the room just
before he walked in the door and as he is standing in the room
threshold she looks up at the ceiling to see
chicken shit splattered all over it …
Some the chickens were kept in a terrible state as you can see from these photos:
