Hyacinth passed away

Friday, July 18th, 2008

Hyacinth seemed to be improving yesterday evening, but when we got up this morning we found her curled up dead. She had apparently passed quite peacefully in her sleep, we estimate four hours or more before we got up. It’s unlikely she was awake when she left us, given that it was night-time and chickens are only active in daylight hours—put them in darkness whenever, they go to sleep.

She’s our first chicken loss. She was, of course, one of our first hens to arrive, one of four ex-battery hens, in February of this year.

We’re very glad Hyacinth got to see the sun, taste worms and bugs, experience weather, have dirt baths, scratch, and dig, and walk around freely before she died. She knew she was loved and cared for. Yesterday she thoroughly enjoyed a warm bath and her first and last experience of a hair-dryer, which went down well presumably because she was being warmed, and the focus of every last scrap of attention. Last time we saw her alive she was clean, dry, and had enjoyed a little egg-and-milk concoction. She gave the impression she was feeling stronger, getting better. She was undoubtedly comfortable and relaxed.

I cried when I found her dead, because I worked so hard to keep her alive and get her better. But I’m very, very happy she got more out of life than 800 million other birds who remain incarcerated and, frankly, tortured so that lazy and greedy people can have cheap food and stressed-out, pale, flavourless eggs at a few pence each. I cannot actually be sad for Hyacinth, not for very long, not when her life with us is set against her life before she came to us. Her passing brings to mind all over again those millions of little cages, the horrors of intensive farming. And it is those thoughts—about all the hens not as lucky as Hyacinth was in the end, the ability of so many people to simply not feel, to not give a damn—that make me shed tears today.

Cruelty to hens is but an indicator of the much bigger, much more terrible, human problem.

Thank you Hyacinth for teaching us some things about chickens, and for all your lovely eggs these past months.