by Carole Meisenhelter

Created on: December 17, 2008   Last Updated: May 16, 2010

It was during the1980’s when we were living on a small rural property in Central Western N.S.W., Australia, that my tale of raising hens began.  Since there was an abundance of land we figured the chickens needn’t live in confined spaces.  My hubby built them a yard of grand proportions; where they could happily graze all day.  These girls had five-star accommodation.  A huge old spreading river-red gum within their yard and its network of bulging roots on the surface, offered the perfect place for the hens to scratch about, or sit and ponder in the shade on a hot summers afternoon.

So there's the hens, picking around the natural herbage after a good night's rest in their shed at one end of the yard, getting a full crop, and then maybe doing a little socializing together under the old gum tree.  Even with all this to themselves, we'd occasionally also open the gate and let them roam well beyond their boundaries.

During the cold of winter though we experienced a serious mouse-plague, and action needed to be taken.  My hubby decided he would slow down the mice from eating the wheat-grain and feed pellets in the open-fronted machinery-shed.  He started sprinkling some rat-bait around the lower shelving where the hessian bags of feed were placed, just off the earthen floor.  Hopefully this would be the end of a number of the mice at least!

Some hours passed, and I was reversing the car out of the shed.  Uh-oh!  I note the hens had obviously been let out earlier that day and had miraculously found their way into the machinery shed!  They were now pecking away furiously and enjoying a meal of a different kind.  You know what I mean...  the rat-bait pellets.  What to do?  I got a message in my head, it sounded like “do you want to phone a hubby" for answers?  I phoned my hubby and he said that the pellets would just put them asleep, slowly, and basically that would be the end of the hens.  How dreadful!  I couldn't do anything to save the hens then at this point; it was sadly all too late.

Since there was nothing I could do to resolve, I reluctantly continued on to my appointment.  He phoned later and told me he'd gotten back home during my absence to check.  The hens had already succumbed to their unfortunate fate and had collapsed in various locations along their track, through the house-yard and down into the paddock which then led to their own

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