The girls... one month after arrival (feathers have been growing back!)

One month in, their combs were slowly starting to turn from pale white/pink to pink/red as they started to recover. (pic: Hope)

 

I am posting this many years later after I abandoned this blog due to the busy-ness of life. I felt I needed to publish an end to the story.  Pictured above are Love and Hope one month after their arrival.  Most of their feathers had grown back and they were standing tall and still having a ball in our backyard.

Hope and Love six months after arrival, pretty much as fit as can be (pictured here with dirty beaks from digging around in compost)

 

 

The third picture shows them about six months after they moved in, pretty much fully recovered considering the horrendous first year of their lives. Love (the white hen) was much stronger than Hope (the brown hen) and Love accordingly ruled the roost.

Just look at how terrible they looked the day they arrived from the battery cage farm!

 

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Love digging happily in some compost (you can also see a bit of Hope in the foreground) - 10 months after arrival. 

If I recall correctly, Hope lived for almost a year and a half from the time we adopted them.. she became ill first. I felt so guilty not having recognised in time just how sick she was (as a method of protecting themselves from predators, they hide when they are weak as much as possible). By the time we took her to the vet it was too late.  She died right before our eyes on the vet's examination table. My lack of experience didn't help but I have consoled myself that I did the best I could for her and that it is quite amazing that they both recovered so well after they started off life on such a bad footing (being tortured in a battery cage farm for the first year of their lives). Love lived on for I think up to two years but she wasn't thriving after Hope departed. She eventually fell ill and we took her to the vet to have her put to sleep.

Love, in the coop, the day after arrival (notice how pale she was)

 

Overall, the experience of adopting two hens rescued from a battery cage farm was an unforgettable moving one that has changed me forever.  These creatures are such characters full of the joy of life when they are well! Once you have witnessed the impact of what these creatures are put through, you would never be able to support any industry that causes such suffering in animals. It is nothing short of criminal.