Matilda

She was so very tiny. The smallest, skinniest and most featherless hen in that particular cage.

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She was terrified when that cage door opened and two hands reached in and grabbed her, but she didn’t know how lucky she was.
16 months of living in that tiny wire cage with 5 other hens was now going to be a distant memory.

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I took her home with three other bald hens that night. It was April and the nights had started to get cold.
These four little girls huddled together in their straw bed for their first night of freedom.
Matilda was terrified of us. She immediately became the lowest in the flock because of her size and submission.
She ran from us at every turn. She was just tiny. A waif of a hen with beautiful big eyes and a pretty defined face.

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As time went on, Matilda grew in confidence and found out exactly who she was.
She learnt how much she loved straw. Straw is Matilda’s very favourite thing in the whole world.
A new hay bale sees her eyes light up and she spends the rest of the day fossicking around in the straw.

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This is Matilda, 18 months after rescue.

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Matilda died in June, 2017. I wrote the following about her when she died _

Matilda loved straw. We lifted her out of that battery cage in April, 2013 and that night i put her in a bed full of straw and from that moment, she realised what she had been put on this earth for – she had been put on the earth to be with straw. Her days were filled with eye bulging excitement when new straw arrived and she would make her strange sound like a camel to alert everyone that her day was definitely an A+ day because straw was here.

Our strange, somewhat alien little lady, who arrived completely bald, left the world today with her head in my hand and in peace. She didn’t want to leave this earth, she loved her life and her freedom, but her body gave up and I had to make the decision to let her go on to her next life, wherever that may be. I hope it’s somewhere that straw is plentiful.

I drove home with her little body in my car wondering why on earth I do this to myself. Rescuing these hens, knowing these hens and loving these hens only to say goodbye to them only a few years later. Why do I torture myself so? Then I looked over to my passenger seat where I had Neptune in a carry cage and I saw her little face peering up out of the sheet covering her cage. There she was, just peering up at me, looking me right in the eyes…..ah, ok, I thought….there’s my reason. There’s my reason.

Goodbye you funny, odd old girl full of passion. It was an honour to know you.

 

Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally