War time offers strange opportunities

Our garden in February.

It is municipal election day today and the skies are filled with jets screeching non-stop. I sit with my morning coffee and practise chicken therapy by relaxing with the hens. 

I suddenly hear a barrage of explosions nearby – and so do the hens. In synch, we move our necks, ears to the sky. “The sky is falling,” observes Henny Penny as she peeks up at the heavens. I agree.

War time offers strange opportunities. Our newest venture was adopting evacuated chickens from the northern front. Not only did these northern chickens suffer stress from rockets, explosions, and being transported en masse, they lived their whole lives in a factory farm stuffed into a cage no larger than a piece of paper. 

So when Amir arrived home at night with 13 chickens stuffed into cardboard boxes, we received trauma. I am now seeing first-hand how cruel and debilitating battery cages are for chickens. When we opened the coop door the next morning, we had 13 bedraggled chickens cowering in silence. They were filthy and had patches of red skin where feathers should be. 

We gently coaxed them outside into the sunshine and onto the soft earth. They shuffled out and immediately tried to cram into a cage that had metal bars for flooring. We shooed them out and presented them with fresh water, lots of grains and some organic leaves to boot. 

Skinny and weak, they just sat there. Their combs were downcast (a condition called comb collapse), and when they tried to take an uneasy step, their claw curled up into a tight ball before they placing it on the ground. 

Being cooped up in in tiny cages, these chickens had never walked, had never touched soft earth, had never spread their wings, and had never tasted a leaf or blade of grass. They were eerily silent. It was like watching chicken zombies.

They are now shedding non-stop, filling up our yard with white feathers. As their wings have only long flight feathers (probably due to the other feathers being rubbed off from the metal bars in their battery cage), they look skeletal. 

Fence patrol

We had to separate these newbies from our own tiny flock (three chickens and a verbose duck) with a fence. Our guys patroled up and down the length of this fence studying them with curiosity, probably wondering if these were chickens or not. (Our duck now thinks she is a chicken, so anything goes.)

It has now been close to a week since the factory farm hens arrived in a huddle on the coop floor, practically immobile. Their chicken instincts are slowly returning; they are now walking around, exploring more of the area each day. They still curl in their claws with each step but are moving a bit faster. 

The hens are now doing chicken things like scratching the ground, pecking, and fluttering their wings. We also offered them dust baths in various locations, but no takers so far. Compared to their former imprisonment and slavery, this could be a veritable chicken spa.

At night, they are not strong enough to fly up to the roosting  bar – and how would they even know about a ‘roosting bar’ when their life was lived in an area that was 94 square inches? When we introduce Penny our Pendesenca hen to the new flock, she will show them how to get up there (our duck and two Silkies will not be useful roosting role models).

King Albert the Silkie

We are hoping to make the big introduction later today. The grand tally will then be one Silkie rooster to a harem of 14 hens plus a duck/wannabe hen. Who would have thought that this once battered, bullied Silkie rooster would today be king of the roost? 

This newfound power has gone to his pea brain and he is now a bully. Puffed up, he asserts himself by strutting along the fence. When the new hens find their strength and can cluck, they may just tell him where to go and I hope they do!

I am procrastinating about voting in the elections today as I seriously feel that my honest and upfront duck could do a better job as mayor than the two sketchy candidates we have in Tzfat. 

The jets rip through the sky above. Henny Penny and I are cock our heads in unison. Unruffled and free, the northern rescue flock softly cluck to themselves, “Been there, done that,” and happily scratch at the damp earth with newly outstretched claws.