Saving six hens

At the hardware store I told the friendly assistant, Annie, about my brilliant, but naughty duck.  Annie was a chook person.  I like chook people.  They are kindred spirits.

     Annie and I chatted about our poultry, their antics and I mentioned I was going to the Yungaburra markets to buy chooks.  She told me she buys her chooks from an egg farm not farm from Atherton.  She explained that there are two types of hens for sale.  Point of lay girls at the beginning of their laying careers for $22 or year old ladies for $4. 

     Immediately, I knew I would rescue four old ones and give them a loving and hopefully longer life.

Apart from dishevilled tail feathers, some bare breasts and a fear of open space and probably deep-seated anxieties, the six girls weren't in bad shape.

     ‘Be careful,’ Annie warned, ‘they’ll probably be missing feathers and they won’t be able to walk cos they’ve been standing in wire cages for a year and they’re not used to walking.’  She saw my face drop.  ‘It’s okay.  They come good after a while.’

     ‘But what’s with the missing feathers?’

     ‘They get bored and peck at each other in the cages.  And they can be a bit nasty so you have to watch them and maybe separate them from each other for a while.’  She sensed my despair.  ‘I never go in to the shed where the cages are cos I can’t bear to see them.  I get my husband to go.’

     By then, all I was concerned about was rescuing not four, but six chooks.  And by God I hope I wasn’t exceeding the maximum limit of household hens as decreed by the Tablelands Regional Council.

     I announced to Tony that we were not going to Yungaburra markets to support local growers and artisans by buying their fresh produce and wares and coffee and treats and four Isa Brown chooks.  We were going the other way to rescue six battery hens (another day and it would have been eight).  To my complete surprise he agreed and got the dog and cat crates filled with hay and loaded them into the Prado.
     I decided, like Annie, I couldn’t bear to see the imprisoned hens, their feet curling unnaturally around the wire, the artificial lighting to stimulate perpetual day time, their red, featherless skin and stumpy beaks, their agitation and mental and physical trauma.

     On the drive out I realised by not confronting the horror of battery farming (thanks to campaigns by animal welfare organisation groups designed to shock viewers and readers), I’d be turning a blind eye to what was happening. I needed to see the reality before having an informed opinion.  
     I was in for a shock.

     Firstly, I was taken aback by the simplicity of both the owners’ house and the old, naturally ventilated and unlit shed that contained rows of caged chooks.  I had expected a huge, air-conditioned building that housed the hens under fluorescent lighting.  
     Clearly there wasn’t a lot of money in caged egg production.

     Then I met one of the owners.  She was a softly-spoken older woman.  Her slim frame was bent over a conveyor belt that sorted the eggs into weights complete with an infrared light to detect any blood spots or other abnormalities in the eggs.

     She had the weariness of someone who’d probably never had a day off because running a family business didn’t allow such a luxury.  I wondered if caged-egg farming wasn’t tough on only the hens.

     ‘How many eggs to you sort a day?’ I asked, amazed by what seemed like thousands of eggs stacked in trays of 30.

     ‘About 5000.’

     ‘How long have you been doing this?’ said Tony.

     ‘Oh, about thirty years.’
     We chatted a bit about what was involved egg farming.  This gentlewoman had a resigned expression as she talked and expertly felt the eggs, examined the shells and placed them on the belt.  I considered retirement village advertisements in glossy magazines and on billboards and the images of similarly-aged people; a couple walking along a beach,  a party playing a round of golf and a husband handing a wife a glass of something at sunset overlooking a scene in nature.  I've never seen an image of a woman working laboriously over a machine.
     My compassion radar was beeping furiously.

     ‘Do you ever need casual help?’  I was thinking of a job for Sutchy over the Christmas holidays and cheap, hard-working labour for the woman.

     ‘We used to,’ she said with a sigh, ‘but there’s not enough money in it.  Just the family that does the work now.’

     There is always a human side to an issue.  Suddenly, the whole caged-egg debate took on another perspective.  
     It’s easy to sit at home and criticise battery farms.  But  consumers want eggs, and lots of them, in a steady, endless supply.  And they won't get them from happy hens, scratching the grounds of sunlit coops with spacious laying bays full of locally grown hay.

     I recall the late nineties when the caged-egg criticisms began to surface.  At first I was shocked and initially critical of the harsh practice till I read an article about the perils of free-range egg farming.  Those so-called humane practices weren’t all they were cracked up to be.  I remember the crux of the article – when a lot of laying hens are put together in a free-range context, bad stuff happens between hens like bullying and attacks.  And it's harder to keep predators out.

     Soon after, Tony and I air-freighted 9 gorgeous Sussex-cross hens and one very handsome Sussex rooster to TI.  This was early 2000 and for the next 13 years we acquired different hens and roosters as people left and we almost always had our own supply of happy eggs.

     My visit to the egg farm reminded me of the problems with free-range chooks and prompted me to do a little research.  We know battery farming is cruel, but I've been surprised by the lack of information for consumers about the problems with free-range egg production.  This SMH article explains some of the problems.
     Some good news!  Coles, Woolies and McDonalds have vowed to phase out caged eggs over the next couple of years.  But are consumers prepared to accept what comes with cage-free eggs - inconsistent production, bullying between chooks, more pests and disease, attacks by snakes and foxes and higher-prices.  And don't think claims of 'free-range' claims are always true.  Recently the Federal Court fined a company $300,000 after it falsely labelled eggs as 'free-range.'

     I do not agree with caged eggs and the idea floated in the industry of compensating battery-egg farmers to move to free-range production is a start.  But I don't agree with mass production of free-range eggs so consumers can feel smug about the rights of animals being met even though there is evidence free-range farming isn't that great and that the egg industry can mislead consumers about free-range production.
     Neither form of egg production is fair to the 11 or so million chooks kept for egg farming (ABS).  
     People can easily become proactive when consuming eggs by either purchasing fewer eggs, having their own 'happy' hens or buying from backyard chook owners or small-scale farmers selling at markets.  Those options are restrictive to humans, but fairer to hens. 
     We live in a society where most consumers have no involvement in the food production process, but have great demands driven by their desires and tastes, no doubt fuelled by cooking magazines and shows like MKR and MasterChef.  
     Habits are hard to break, but at the end of the day, the fate of markets like the caged-egg/free-range egg farming is in the hands of consumers.  A bit of awareness about the plight of the birds and the alternatives to mass egg farming (battery or free-range) will ensure the hens are treated fairly ... like six old chooks who are now struggling to come to terms with a bit more room to move at 8 Second Avenue in Atherton!

Naughty, knowing Pepper

Yesterday we had planned to visit the Yungaburra markets and buy four chooks, Isa Browns. Tony has been doing some fowl research and apparently, Isa Browns are the latest in backyard chooks.  And we reckon no back yard is complete without 'happy' chooks.

     However, Pepper inadvertently took us on a different path all because, being exceptionally clever and curious, she went investigating in the yard behind ours. She has been going walkabout to the neighbours on one side, but Tony patched up that broken part of the fence and we thought that was the end of her wandering.  

     On Friday, Lucky was quacking in an ominous, warning tone. The kids and I rushed down.  Pepper had ‘disappeared.’ 

     ‘Pepper.  Pepper,’ I screamed.  ‘Pepper Zen, come here.’ 

     Pepper always honks if I call her, but there was nothing. I feared the worst; she’d got into the diagonal neighbour’s yard to the other side and the massive, growling mutt that patrols the back fence had eaten her.

     ‘Pepper, Pepper.’  I became frantic.

     A female's voice, old and acerbic, broke the silence. ‘Are you looking for the duck?’ 

     ‘Oh, yes.  Where is she?’

     ‘In MY garden …. AS USUAL.’  I apologised and apologised.  ‘Is it a drake or a duck?’  I assured her Pepper was a duck and a very friendly one.  ‘I’ll hand her over.’

     And she very kindly dropped Pepper over the fence.  I just managed to catch her.

     I thanked and thanked her, promised her I’d find where Pepper was getting through the fence and fix it.  Then I admonished Pepper before penning her in a tiny area with left over hay bales till I could buy some security-style fencing for Tony to erect.

     ‘Tonyyy,’ I always call out when there is a bloke job confronting me.  Fixing up a dodgy fence was one such job.

     Tony appeared and I related the dilemma.

     He sighed.  ‘Go to the hardware store and get something.  I’ll fix it up.’  

     And that’s how I ended up at the hardware store, not going to Yungaburra markets and rescuing six battery hens.

Our new home in Atherton

Yes, we’ve moved to Atherton and discovered in mid-September it is still winter.  After two nights of freezing I realised that one can’t get warm with layers of clothing and layers of sheets and doona covers.  So I went and bought a doona to fill one of the covers.  Aaaah.  Toasted bliss.

  Tony bought this from the second hand shop.

Great-grandfather's dressing gown, circa 1950.

      How did the move happen?  To quote Tashi, ‘It was like this.”

     On 12 July we returned from a glorious week-long visit on the Atherton Tablelands back to our rental house at Rainy Mountain Place.  There was a letter from the property agent.  It advised we could, when our six month lease expired on 19 September, renew for another six months or vacate.  

     Prior to signing the lease back in March, I specifically addressed the post-fixed lease situation and negotiated verbally to remain on a month by month tenancy for a small increase in rent. 

     But stupid me, I had only made notes rather than have the condition included in the lease.  I reminded the agent of our agreement and she kindly agreed to offer a three month fixed lease.  I realised how vulnerable tenants are.  With only two month’s notice (sometimes less), a tenant can be homeless.  Perhaps my vulnerability came from living at 10 Pearl Street for 20 years and becoming a little complacent.   

    Tony and I wanted the kids to feel secure about where they were living.  Seffy heads to high school next year and we want her to start and finish at the one secondary school.

     There was only one solution; we needed to buy a house …. except we didn’t have much money and neither of us had permanent jobs.  In fact, it looked pretty desperate for a while and so I did what helps me cope … bit my nails.  

     Several banks wouldn’t consider an application for a loan where the applicant hadn't been in a permanent job for longer than the three month probationary period.

     I spent many hours at night, gazing at the dimly lit ceiling, wondering where we would end up living.  And I couldn't help thinking about people who were homeless whether they were living on the streets or in temporary shelters or even not having safe, secure and long-term accommodation.  We had a house on TI and family to stay with.  But still, I felt very vulnerable. I needed to find a house to buy and a bank to lend us money.  I cursed the GFC many times, but I chanced upon the Bank of Queensland as I was walking out of Smithfield one day.  I'd never noticed the bank or the branch before.  I didn't know it at the time, but I'd found the Holy Grail.

     To cut a long story short, Cairns property prices, especially on the northern beaches had sky-rocketed with the impending casino planned for Yorkey’s Knob.  We needed to look elsewhere.  We loved Malanda, but there were limited work prospects for both of us. Kuranda was lovely, but property a bit pricey.  Tony might have been able to get work back on the ships in Mackay, but we didn’t want to be far from Tony’s mum or my parents.

     Two weeks after opening “that letter,” Tony suggested Atherton and I couldn’t understand why we hadn’t thought of it before.  We started our married life at the Atherton courthouse and indeed, TK and Sutchy started their lives at Atherton hospital. We’ve been visiting the town and surrounds since.  The climate’s perfect, there’s plenty of services and the people are friendly.  And I had been hearing for years the high school is fantastic, just what we needed for Seffy.

     We thought about it for three seconds.  We bought a house that settled, in a mildly ironic way, on 12 September, two months exactly after receiving “that letter.”  

     It took a few days to move up, but Tony and Kibby did most of the work in this.

     When I was booking the trailer, I noticed in the fine print that “the hirer must pay an amount at the point of hire to cover the cost of insurance.”

     So I rang Trudy at Move Yourself.

     “Oh, don’t worry about that, love.  It’s included in the price.  It’s just a technicality we need to put in.”

     I always get nervous when traders mention 'technicality" or "technically.'

     “So if we have an accident the insurance is covered.  We don’t need to pay a premium.”

     “Well,” said Trudy, “if it’s just a scratch or something little we just fix it ourselves, but technically if there’s more damage the insurance is included in the price.  It’ll be fine.”

     As a lawyer, I know nothing is ever fine.  If something can go wrong, it will at the worst time and in the worst way.  Law reports are full of cases in which important considerations were not considered by the parties and things weren’t “fine” at all. 

     But it was late Thursday night and Tony needed a frigging trailer so he could be at the house the next day at 3 pm just after settlement.  I wondered if we would qualify for legal aid in the event of an accident involving the trailer.

     “Thanks, Trudy,” I said, scribbling notes of our conversation

     I paid via credit card and made the sign of the cross.

     Tony did three trips and allowed me to accompany him on the third and final one because he reckoned I stress him too much when he’s driving.

     And guess what happened with the Move Yourself trailer?

     Absolutely nothing.

     Except the divorce-provoking argument between Tony and I on the way home with the empty trailer behind us.  He wanted to overtake a Maui campervan driven at 80 by, I guessed, a European tourist. Tony was worried about the convoy of cars and trucks behind us.

     I won the argument only because I screeched long enough, “just wait, for God’s sake, what is it about men having to go fast and overtake other cars when we’ll only get home three minutes earlier If we survive which is unlikely because we have a huge trailer attached to us and we’ve got the kids in the car and you can kill yourself on your own but not with us in here and are you even listening to me?” 

     I heard giggling in the back and discovered the kids were in stitches.  Time to quit and gaze at the tail lights of the Maui van.

     We didn’t end up divorcing and we are very happy in our new home and our new town as we start new lives.

     Although when he puts on his antique dressing gown in the evenings and mornings, I can’t help calling him ‘Athe.’

Ready to make the last trip to Atherton.

Last thing unloaded.

All our goods and chattels in the LUG.

While Tony and Kibby did the second trip on Saturday, Seffy and I picked up her new puppy, Pippa Jane, from YAPS.

This is Pippa when she first met Pepper and Lucky.

Cutting vines from the gate to keep the dogs in.

Success.  A cobbled-together, dog-proof gate!