Back in the 60's and 70's my family kept a small flock in the backyard of our house in Brooklyn. Maybe a dozen birds, if that. You could get away with a lot in Brooklyn back then. LOL One day my folks came home from a visit upstate with a crate of 6 white hens. They had stopped at a farm to get fresh produce and in talking to the farmer got on the subject of chickens. When my dad mentioned that we had some back home, the farmer mentioned that he had some old layers that weren't doing their business anymore; maybe one or two eggs a week at best. He said that they were scheduled to go to the great chicken coop in the sky. One thing lead to another and my dad ended up buying the hens for 50 cents or a buck each. He figured that if they didn't lay we could always make soup. Those poor hens looked miserable; skinny, clipped beaks, feathers missing, I swear that some of the poor things had a nervous twitch. Dad threw them in with the other hens and roosters and basically kissed it up to god. After a few days those old hens began to settle in and actually started to put on weight and lay. Within a couple of months we were getting 4 or 5 eggs a week out of those old birds! Better than 2 dozen eggs from $3 - $6 worth of throw away hens. Not bad! Shows you what a little tender loving care, good food and fresh air (our birds were all free-range even though we didn't know to call it that 50 years ago, just the right way to keep chickens) will do for a bird.
Back in the 60's and 70's my family kept a small flock in the backyard of our house in Brooklyn. Maybe a dozen birds, if that. You could get away with a lot in Brooklyn back then. LOL One day my folks came home from a visit upstate with a crate of 6 white hens. They had stopped at a farm to get fresh produce and in talking to the farmer got on the subject of chickens. When my dad mentioned that we had some back home, the farmer mentioned that he had some old layers that weren't doing their business anymore; maybe one or two eggs a week at best. He said that they were scheduled to go to the great chicken coop in the sky. One thing lead to another and my dad ended up buying the hens for 50 cents or a buck each. He figured that if they didn't lay we could always make soup. Those poor hens looked miserable; skinny, clipped beaks, feathers missing, I swear that some of the poor things had a nervous twitch. Dad threw them in with the other hens and roosters and basically kissed it up to god. After a few days those old hens began to settle in and actually started to put on weight and lay. Within a couple of months we were getting 4 or 5 eggs a week out of those old birds! Better than 2 dozen eggs from $3 - $6 worth of throw away hens. Not bad! Shows you what a little tender loving care, good food and fresh air (our birds were all free-range even though we didn't know to call it that 50 years ago, just the right way to keep chickens) will do for a bird.