Batteries Not Included

In 2012 the practice of battery farming of chickens in the EU was ended. Everyone shout hurrah. Yep, no more small cages with birds tightly packed and unable to move. Instead they get a lovely des-res the size of.... Well, roughly the size of the box I'm holding. Believe it or not, the current European rules for 'enriched' cages allows chickens a whopping 750cm² of floor space. That's around 21.5 x 35cm per chicken. In the US the recommendation is around 430 to 560cm² per chicken.

Ponder this, studies have shown:

"... when turning, hens used 540 to 1006cm², when stretching wings 653 to 1118cm², when wing flapping 860 to 1980cm², when feather ruffling 676 to 1604cm², when preening 814 to 1270cm² and when ground scratching 540 to 1005cm²"

These are all perfectly normal, indeed natural, actions for a chicken. We see it all the time - this is about 2/3rds of our run, having had to extend when we added to our mini-flock and initial mixing didn't go so well. Put it this way, in this back 2/3rds section alone we could fit... 160 chickens. We've only got two in this space at the moment, planning on getting back up to four after we've been on holiday in April. While most people will see these as 'just chickens', the fact of the matter is when you keep your own, and get to see the personalities of them (we've had 6 in total and every one was different from the others), they're pets rather than livestock.

And that's why we keep our own chickens. Because we know they're happy, we know they can move, we know they can act naturally. People in this country will rail at the sight of dog farms in Korea; they'll be up in arms about horses being killed for meat; they'll campaign against hunting with dogs; but they'll still buy battery eggs and 'value' frozen chicken without giving it a second thought.

Quite frankly, that's bonkers.

Morning Woody
Curled up sleeping fox
Grey Wagtail

The Blip Building of a chicken run
Concreting
The frame pieces
Moved in
Finished extension