Graham : We're from the 'land down under' - in rural NSW, Australia where it's hot right now. Attached some recent photos of our new chicken house, with four 1 year-old Isa Brown hens. We rescued them from a large battery egg farm 3 months ago. The chicken house is now located in a safe chook-run of about 100 square metres.

I'm considering a rooster, and that's what has prompted me to write. Let me explain why.

The hens have settled in well, and have mostly grown new feathers (they had bare skin around their necks and chests from feeding through their wire cages). But there's some serious bullying going on. It got so bad that the lowest-ranked hen began to sleep separately in a small cupboard in the chicken-run. When I discovered this, I decided