Chicken rehab

You wouldn't think anything as fundamentally stupid as a chicken could be psychologically traumatised, would you? I mean, they are dim enough that if they happen to overshoot the entrance to their pen by a couple of feet, they will fuss about, two feet away from the right place, without having the nous to go back and retrace their steps.
But these chickens were traumatised: it was like a dim echo of the release from Auschwitz (I don't mean to insult by the comparison.) For the first forty-eight hours, they did nothing. Nothing. When they could see me watching them, they stood with their eyes open and watched me. When they couldn't see me, they sat with their eyes closed. They didn't eat or drink. They didn't scratch at the ground, or interact with each other. They barely walked about. Everything was shut down: everything but breathing.
Now, they've been here those 48 hours, and it's a sunny afternoon. I've let the other chickens out into the garden, so that the new ones can go into the run. And they are walking about, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. They are pecking at things: eating pellets, but also pecking at inappropriate things, that a normal chicken wouldn't bother with, like the wall, or scraps of sawdust. They have started to drink. I just saw one scratch at the ground for the first time, and another stretch its wings out: poor bald wings, with just the shafts of the feathers yet.
These chickens have been alive for a year, each with a space no bigger than a piece of A4 paper, and they have been able to do nothing, in all that time, but eat, drink and lay eggs. This is the first time they have scratched at the ground, or stood up tall, or stretched their wings out fully. And they are the lucky ones. Most of their cohort will be chicken nuggets by now.