A little lord has moved in

And I say goodbye to our oldest ex-battery hen, Gretel

You can listen to me read this article by clicking the player above.

Hello Friends,

I don’t know what’s been in the air lately, but a lot of the boys have been fighting. Honestly! Why is it always the bloomin’ boys that cause trouble?

Roosters who were the best of friends are suddenly at odds, and the male ducks have started chasing the hens. I’d have expected all this in spring, not the middle of winter. We’ve had to throw up a couple of emergency enclosures just to keep the peace, because once two roosters have had a real fight, it’s terribly hard to come back from.

Speaking of roosters…

The Magnificent, Little John!

A week ago, I received a phone call.

The woman on the phone was standing behind the vets in South Grafton, holding a small rooster. Her dogs had cornered him and she’d only just scooped him up in time. She’d gone straight in to ask the vets to look after him, and they’d said no.

The neighbour was no help either, saying he wasn’t theirs and that they’d only started hearing crowing the day before.

It seems someone had dumped this little boy by the vets, the way people dump kittens there all the time. The difference being that the vets sometimes take the kittens in. They won’t take a rooster.

The woman then tried Happy Paws, our local dog and cat shelter, who also said no, and it was the owner of Happy Paws who passed on my number.

When I heard the whole story, and that he was only fifteen minutes away, what could I say?

Yes, we are over capacity, but the other option was to leave him there in a backstreet of town, where he was sure to be attacked. I had to say bring him here.

When I took him from her, I was pleased to see that his injuries from the dogs were not too bad, just a few superficial scrapes on his comb. He doesn’t seem too frightened of people, and he has such character in his little face.

We’ve named him Little John.

Thankfully just a few scrapes on his comb.

The only way to make space for him was to borrow a coop from two of our other boys, Shane and Gary. I closed him in there for the day while the two of them pottered about outside, and at night I brought him into the house in a carrier so the boys could have their coop back to sleep in.

But even a sweet, little rooster can upend things just by being there.

Shane and Gary were dumped together in Grafton near Mcdonalds and have looked out for each other ever since. They are truly the best of friends, and within a day of being neighbours with Little John they’d fallen out with each other, bickering and sulking.

I knew a proper fight was around the corner and I will not risk a friendship like theirs, so Little John had to move. I’m relieved to say the two of them are very nearly back to their old selves.

Little John got a quick and slightly dodgy enclosure of his own, with one of the lovely tall perches we’ve built from collected sticks and logs to make it less boring. It won’t be his permanent place, but at least it is safe for now. He is one of the smallest roosters we have, and yet he has claimed the biggest perch and sits like a little lord surveying his estate.

Little John testing out his new perch. He soon hopped up to the very top so he could lord it over everyone.

Little John is still carried inside at night, since I’ve no coop for him and can’t afford one just now. But he’s safe, he’s fed, he has a steady stream of passing chickens to supervise, and he seems content.

That same weekend I heard about another dumped boy in Iluka, a little beachside town about an hour north of us. It only has around 1,700 residents, yet Iluka seems to be a popular site for dumping roosters. I don’t know whether it’s one person or many, but it is cruel and out of control.

I’ll be writing to Clarence Valley Council, which covers both Grafton and Iluka, to ask for an in-person meeting about putting up signs that make it clear dumping animals is illegal and a finable offence. From past experience an email alone gets ignored or gets a template response saying to contact the RSPCA, so I’m hoping that sitting across a desk from someone might do more.

Even the steadiest friendships haven’t been spared the odd mood that has fallen over the boys of The Hen Haven. Fraser and Jasper, usually besties, have fallen out, and I can’t just pop one of them down the back, because these two like to be near the house.

Fraser has to inspect absolutely everything new we bring here and Jasper has to supervise me at all times. I’ve had to resort to keeping one inside and one out, swapping them over halfway through the day. They don’t make it easy.

And now the news I think many of you were bracing for after the last newsletter.

Our dear elderly ex-battery hen, Gretel, passed away on the 18th of June.

A photo from a couple of months ago of me and my friend, Gretel

I think it was the right decision. She could no longer digest her food which meant I couldn’t even help her through crop feeding. I guess one of the tumours had blocked her digestive system further down. She had grown so very tired. What I wanted for her was a peaceful goodbye. The difficulty was that our regular vet, who has always given such gentle, peaceful goodbyes, is travelling the world at the moment, and I felt anxious all day knowing it would be someone else.

That morning I gave Gretel the only thing she would still eat, an egg, set aside just for her. She’d sit on her heat pad taking a few bites, fall asleep, wake and take a few more, and drift off again.

I’d rung the vets, but the call back never came, so when I had to drive into Grafton for an appointment of my own, I took her with me on her heat pad rather than leave her. When I reached the clinic they apologised, saying they had been busy with other animals, and a small voice in my head thought, well, Gretel matters too. They agreed to see her at 4.20pm.

Helping Gretel drink water on her last day

That left a couple of hours, not worth driving home for, so we sat by the river together and watched the water. By the time the appointment came I was so nervous, and even once we were inside there was another hour’s wait as they caught up with the backlog of other appointments.

I think it was the right decision, but it wasn’t as peaceful as I’d hoped for.

After the initial anesthetic, Gretel kept lifting her head and looking about instead of drifting off. I sat with her for half an hour, stroking her face, and she leaned into my hand. When the vet finally gave the drug, I held her through her last breaths. I’d been holding it together until then, but when it was clear it was not simply falling asleep as it would be for many dogs or cats, I started sobbing, wondering in those last minutes whether I’d made the right choice at all, and wishing more than anything that our own vet had been there to make it gentler.

And then her suffering was over, and I felt the relief of that and a great wave of sadness, both at once.

Some weeks ago, someone had commented here on Substack that if I chose euthanasia for Gretel, that would be an act of human supremacy and it would be where my kindness ends. I didn’t believe that and know how chickens can hang on and keep suffering horribly in their last weeks, but those words started to flash through my mind in those last moments.

The vet herself was kind, and the staff were kind. But there was a casualness about the surgery as a whole that I don’t believe would have been there for a dog or a cat euthanasia. No candle was lit at the reception desk the way it is for other animals.

As Gretel was passing it was right near closing time, staff were gathering their things and calling out to each other about trivia night, off to the pub. Someone let out a jolly call of ‘trivia!’ into the room I was in just at the moment Gretel was passing. I wanted so badly to tell them to please, just shut up.

I didn’t. I just held her and thought again, well, Gretel matters too.

The next day I buried her, and soon I’ll plant a tree in her memory.

Gretel came to us in 2020, liberated from a battery cage, where she’d had a broken wing. I’d been nursing her more intensively since her liver tumour diagnosis in March 2023. The tumour stemmed from reproductive cancer, the kind caused by being bred to lay far too many eggs.

I’d always loved Gretel, but for those last three years we grew very close. She was an independent lady, never one to demand attention, but she loved it when I sat near her while she went about her chicken business, and now and then she’d come and settle by my legs.

She was a bossy boots. She made sure I never forgot to hand feed her, her share of the greens when the rabbits ate of an evening. I loved her spirit and her beautiful, glossy feathers. I’m so glad I had that time with her, and so sorry she was ever bred into a body that was made to let her down, even after she was free of the cage.

There’s a huge hole here at Hen Haven now that Gretel is gone. But life at the Hen Haven doesn't stop, and the others still need me to look after them, or they need to boss me about, or a mixture of the two.

Jasper, this evening, showing off one of the loudest crows of the Hen Haven!

This morning I scattered corn for Jasper in the house (it was his time inside whilst Fraser was enjoying the front garden) mostly to distract him from his non-stop crowing, because he is one of the loudest crowers we have. And he refused to touch a single piece.

Instead he made those beautiful little cooing, come-and-look noises, look what I’ve found, look at all these treats, while I tried to get on with sorting the other animals. He would not eat one bit until I came over, picked up a few pieces myself, pretended to eat them, and set them back down on the counter. Only then, did he tuck in.

He’s outside the window watching me as I write this, like a little stalker.

A Big Dream

The rooster dumped in Iluka is still out there. I had to tell the woman who found him that I couldn’t take him in. There is literally nowhere to put him. She donated $200 into my account and told me to use it for materials for his enclosure. I felt so guilty, because it isn’t enough to build one, which means I still can’t take him and I must sort out an enclosure for the others waiting first.

I told her I would give it back so she could give it to a sanctuary that could help. But she couldn’t find anyone else. So there he stays. If I do nothing, he may well be killed by a predator. The only positive is that he is roosting up trees which will hopefully keep him safe at night, and she’s kindly feeding and watering him for now.

Sometimes I think about what I would do if I were rich. Even if we bought the properties either side of us, it still wouldn’t be enough for all the roosters in need. You’d have to be so rich you could buy a whole street’s worth of rural properties. Sometimes I let myself dream about that, a whole street of paddocks with large, garden-like enclosures for roosters to live in, nobody complaining about the crowing, someone in every home who loves them.

Maybe one day. Stranger things have happened.

Until that day comes, I’d be so grateful for any help to build another enclosure. We’re nearly at the end of the financial year, and I am sending a huge thank you to everyone who has donated.

Every donation or paid subscriber makes me feel I can keep doing this.

You can donate here: https://henrescue.org/donate

Or become a paid subscriber below.

Thank you, as always, for being here, for caring about these little ones most of the world has decided don’t count. I hope you’re having the most wonderful week.

Love,

Catherine x