The Great Chicken Run Escape

Last week, aided and abetted by Hansel and Gretel, our two goats, the chickens made a bid for freedom. Their foray into the big wide world was short-lived however, and they were soon back in their run. The hens spend much of the winter in a large covered run, which protects them from the worst of the weather and helps the garden area, they usually run around in, to recover. For the last couple of weeks, they have been eyeing up the rapidly appearing green shoots of the returning grass with something reminiscent of circling hyenas waiting to steal some of a lion’s kill.

The other reason they have been in a covered run is to keep them safe from bird flu. It has been sweeping the world. Over the past few years H5N1, to give it its formal name, has killed millions of wild birds and domesticated poultry across the world. All our hens including Gregory Peck our beautiful cockerel, are fit and healthy. They all have bright red combs and we are getting around half a dozen eggs each day. We have managed to keep our neighbours in eggs since late February. So, while our hens might be keen to get back out on the grass once more, they are by no means suffering, more of which later. They certainly don’t have bird flu, which is a relief.

Worryingly the virus has started to jump to other animals, cats, foxes, sea lions, cows and even humans too. Last week it was reported that a man in Texas had caught bird flu from contact with a cow. Thankfully, to date, there is no evidence to suggest that the virus can be spread from one person to another. Globally, there have been 887 reported cases of bird flu infecting people. 462 of these folk died as a consequence of the infection. It is potentially a hundred times worse than Covid which, at the start of the pandemic in 2020, saw something like 20% of those infected sadly dying. There is no human bird flu vaccination available.

Interestingly, with echoes of the Covid pandemic, the UK government issued guidance last month that we should all stay 2 metres away from wild birds. I have warned the little robin, who comes looking for worms and watches me as I work in the garden. Whilst somewhat humorous as a piece of government advice, not all requirements regarding hens are as funny. From October this year, anyone keeping chickens will be required to register the birds with the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and apply for a holding number. We already do something similar for our goats and J is, to her delight, registered as a “hobby farmer”. I’m not sure how the new regulations will be effectively policed. However, it is an administrative burden, in both time and cost, that will see many back garden hen keepers give up their birds.

The new regulatory burden is nominally designed to control bird flu. However, most responsible poultry keepers will ensure their hens are protected from contact with wild birds, who may carry the virus, in the same way as ours have been over the winter months. Indeed, last year when there was an outbreak locally, we had to keep our hens in splendid isolation for several months. Despite their covered run being large and spacious, towards the end of their confinement, they did start to get a little techy and were clearly upset they couldn’t run free, as they normally would during the summer.

Do hens suffer because of their lives being disrupted in this way? Well, the evidence from our small flock would suggest they do and they don’t. Some of our hens are two or three years old (with the exception of chicks hatched that are male, we don’t kill them) and they are quite familiar with the winter/summer cycle and only start to become twitchy, as the days get longer and there’s more sunlight. Yet when they were kept isolated during the summer, they clearly began to get upset. Last week, I heard an interesting discussion around the same topic.

Most days, I like to listen to Farming Today, a Radio 4 programme that airs at 05.45 during the week. Last week, there was a debate about the banning of poultry cages in the UK. These were not the horrible cruel small metal cages used in industrial scale egg production. Those were thankfully banned in 2012. Enriched cages were introduced and it is these that the UK government now want to ban. Enriched cages are much larger, have perches, scratching areas and proper nest boxes for the hens to lay their eggs. There were two elements to the discussion that resonated. One was the farmer being asked if he thought the hens suffered by living in these cages. His response was the hens knew no other existence, so he didn’t see how they could suffer. It was a statement that has made me ponder all week, but it feels a little like a metaphysical conundrum probably only Nietzsche might untangle, and we can’t do it here.

The second element was the farmer’s complaint that such decisions and changes in policy were made by folk in Whitehall, who, likely, would never have visited a poultry farm, would not be able to describe what an enriched cage looked like, and who probably would have a stab at the philosophical question of suffering. Not that I would want to intentionally draw parallels, but next week I’m to attend two regulatorily reviews of our Trust, which will be conducted by folk who likely, have never nursed someone experiencing severe mental distress, or run a ward for acutely ill service users, or had to ensure safe and quality services are consistently provided within finite and often shrinking financial resources. However, just like our chicken run, we have plenty of green shoots (of improvement) that I will be happy to share and hopefully, others will recognise too.