Chicken update

Our six new hens are doing very well indeed. They have settled in quite happily to their new life and have realised that, like Nick Park's Chicken Run chickens, there's more to life than just laying a daily egg.

They came from a free range egg unit near Tregaron that had been producing eggs for Tesco and needed to clear out 3,500 or so of these hens to make way for a fresh batch. The farmer had to get rid of them or, on February 23rd, they had an appointment with a slaughterman at a chicken sandwich paste factory.

So homes were needed for 3,500 redundant layers. A tall order you might think, but this is where the local Freecycle network and Brian's colleague Neris came into the equation.

The farmer had been offered 7p for each bird from the sandwich paste factory. Instead he offered them at £1 each on Freecycle.

Neris heard about the birds' plight and decided to get involved. She works with Brian at police HQ and was in the position of being able to publicise the chickens' plight to every single police employee throughout Dyfed and Powys. She has friends working for both Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire county councils too and they passed on the details of the hens to their colleagues. Neris was a determined woman; she made sure everyone knew about the birds; she even arranged collection for some.

Although the farmer was selling the hens at £1 each, he gave many away; we wanted and paid for four, we got six. He did that over and over again. I should imagine that anyone who went there for a bird or two got a few more than they bargained for. So he must have made about 50p per bird overall instead of the 7p he would have got from the chicken paste manufacturer.

It is now the end of February. All 3,500 chickens missed their appointment to be transformed into pots of chicken sandwich paste. In the end the farmer was left with 80 birds which he has kept on as layers to scratch about in a spare field and lay the occasional egg for farm gate sales. I think he was probably a little overwhelmed at the way the whole thing snowballed. He never expected to get rid of 3,500 unwanted birds, let alone have so many of them make new homes with members of the local police force!

But it all starts again. At the end of March he is to restock with another 3,500 point of lay pullets at a cost £7 each to lay eggs for Tesco and in 72 weeks time those birds will be old has-beens too.

The Lie of the Land

I watched two interesting, but disturbing programmes last night. The first was the second part of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Chicken Run' programme.

Hugh is highlighting the plight of the cheap supermarket chicken by setting up his own intensive chicken farm and rearing 4,000 birds. It's not a pretty sight. Only a few days from slaughter the birds were virtually unable to stand amd all they did was stagger between the food and water. Visitors - including Jamie Oliver - were horrified. "Why aren't they walking about?" Jamie asked, appalled. They couldn't. Their bloated bodies (the bits we eat) were too heavy.

The birds had no space to move around in, no access to the outdoors and no natural light. Hugh ended up in tears after having to kill yet another sick bird. Part three is tonight (9pm, Channel Four). All he wants is for consumers to pay £1 extra and buy a free range bird. It's not too much to ask is it?

Later I watched Molly Dineen's documentary "The Lie of the Land" in which she followed some of the protesters from the pro-hunt demonstration in London home to see how someone lived when their life depended on the countryside. She watched as the huntsman spent his days going from dairy farm to dairy farm shooting day old 'worthless' dairy crossbreed bull calves. She interviewed farmers who didn't know how they were going to continue farming when everything they produced was sold at a loss.

One farmer said of the supermarkets: "They are superpowers. We're nothing really. They just buy it where they can get it cheapest."

Another said: "The welfare standards of imported food is a damn site worse that we've got here. All you are doing is exporting your problems."

Another, who had been shooting foxes he said would have been much more humanely killed by dogs said: "Everyone's focussed on sport, because you can see it. But nobody's interested in how their food is produced. Look at battery chickens. Why is that acceptable, but hunting and shooting isn't?"

I can't help but think that both programmes were probably preaching to the already converted. I don't think that the anti-hunt supporters shouting at the pro-hunt "privileged toffs" to go home would watch such programmes and if they did would they watch them with an open mind? Do they realise that some of the "privileged toffs" are just hard-working ordinary people - like themsevles - flirting with poverty? They're not all rich princes and earls. Some are, of course. The ones shown on the documentary were not.

The divide between city and country seems to be widening. Farmers are portrayed as fat, greedy, money-grabbing and cruel. In the suburbs it seems to me that the general opinion is that farmers do not love their animals. Last night they would have seen that, when the huntsman was shooting these doe-eyed calves, only one farmer was present. The others could not bear to be there when the knackerman came and instead left the money in a carrier bag (ironically a Tesco carrier bag in one case). One even left a bag of fudge. For the life of a calf.

The programme ended with a farmer, a dying breed, he said, who has a suckler herd. He described his business as 'borderline'. He then went to a field gate and called to his herd which were grazing two fields away. At the sound of his voice the cows and calves lifted their heads and started replying. They ran down the slope to a hedge and mooed enthusiastically.

"They can't get out down there," said the farmer. "If they really love me they'll go back up the hill and through the other gate."

Molly Dineen was astonished.

"They come when you call?" she asked.

"Of course," said the farmer. "They're my girls."

They loved him.