Battery Hens – The Real Cost Of Your Eggs

When you pick up a carton of eggs, in the pristine environment of a supermarket, the poor battery hens that laid those eggs are probably the last thing on your mind.

Perhaps you can spare a few minutes now to consider the horrific industry that your egg purchases support.

I know it’s unpleasant to think about and you probably have to stretch your pennies as far as you can, especially in this economic catastrophe we are all living through.

But the fact is, that these birds live in such appalling conditions because of the same insatiable greed that has crashed our economy.

I’m not for one second suggesting that anyone who is struggling financially should buy eggs that cost 5 times the price of battery eggs. But if you can afford to make ethical purchases then please give this some thought.

Nothing will change while we keep on doing the same things.

First A Happy Picture

It’s a beautiful sunny day. As I write this I’m sitting by my french windows, looking out to the field, where my hens are busy scratching around and going about their business.

Brewster, my rooster, is keeping a look out, while the girls peck up some tasty bugs.

I can see them stretch their wings and flap a little, I can see them jump on a straw bale that’s waiting to be spread out in the goat shed.

They’ve already made a raid on my dogs food bowl, same as they do every day. All in all they’ve had a pretty good morning.

Some have already been into the coop, made nests and laid their eggs.

As the day gets hotter, they will seek out some shade, take a dust bath and take a nap, before coming out again later on for some more foraging.

My daughter goes out a couple of times, to take them some scraps from the kitchen and collect their eggs. She’ll check them to make sure they are all ok and will pick up one or two for a cuddle.

My flock of birds and other free range birds like them are the lucky ones and unfortunately they are in the minority.

A Horror Show

It’s crowded, the noise is deafening and it stinks.

The battery house has close to 125,000 fearful, unhappy, frustrated birds. The small cages, each holding 6 birds (sometimes more), are stacked many tiers high.

The hens can hardly move, let alone stretch their wings or their legs. Each bird has a space the size of a sheet of printer paper. They can’t dust bathe, they can’t even stand on a solid floor, instead they must spend their lives on the sloping wire floor of the cage.

These birds can’t make nests. Even if there was room for them to do so, their cages are barren of nesting material.

Observe any hen in a more natural environment and you will see that she seeks privacy to lay her eggs. In the battery cage there is no privacy.

Sick And In Pain

Battery hens, imprisoned for life without any exercise, while constantly drained of calcium to form egg shells, develop severe osteoporosis known as caged layer fatigue. Low on calcium, millions of hens become paralyzed and die of hunger and thirst unable to reach their food and water.

This battery hen was lucky she got rescued. See the end of this page for a picture of her at her new home.

Battery hens suffer from reproductive disorders that afflict hens deprived of exercise.

Eggs are formed that are too big to be laid and uteruses prolapse. Oviducts become clogged with masses and bits of broken eggs.

The oviducts of battery hens have become infested with salmonellae bacteria that enter the forming egg causing food poisoning in unsuspecting consumers.

Egg Recall Expands To Half A Billion Nationwide – August 20 2010

The atmosphere in the battery hen house is fetid. These unfortunate creatures will never know fresh air or sunlight. Instead they must breathe the toxic ammonia rising from the manure pits beneath the cages. Ammonia-burned eyes and chronic respiratory disease are present in millions of hens. Studies have shown that even at low concentrations, significant amounts of ammonia can be absorbed into the egg.

Many hens become trapped in the bars of the cages, when heads, wings beaks or feet become stuck. No one checks the birds and they die from lack of food and water.

Even eating is a misery for battery hens. In chronic pain from having their beaks sliced off with a hot blade, the hens are forced to stretch across a feeder fence in front of the feed trough. They eventually wear away their neck feathers and suffer from blisters and infections.

Hens kept in these barbaric conditions have to be dosed with various antibiotics to prevent outbreaks of disease. This widespread use of antibiotics in industrial farming, is the cause of the emergence of the drug resistant bacteria that are now routinely claiming countless human lives every year.

The Final Journey

At the end of their pitiful lives, when the hens are no longer productive layers, they are torn from their cages.

Grabbed by their heads, wings or feet, by stuffers paid for speed not gentleness, many bones are painfully broken, as they are loaded on to trucks destined for the slaughter house.

At the slaughter house the battery hens are hung upside down on moving conveyor belts, with the shackles putting pressure on their weak and often broken legs, causing pain as well as stress.

They sometimes receive electricshocks from water that splashes up from the stun tank before they are fully immersed. Some birds manage to flap their wings and rise above the stun tank. These hens have their necks cut un-stunned.

Some manage to avoid both the stun tank and the neck cutting. Their fate is to be immersed in the scalding tank fully conscious.

The horribly abused state of their bodies means that battery hens could never be sold to consumers as cuts of chicken. Their meat is destined for pet foods, baby foods, convenience foods, soups and stocks where the bruised flesh and abscesses are well hidden.

If you want to stop supporting an industry which inflicts pain and suffering on hens, just to increase profits, then choose free range eggs or considerraising your own flock.

This is the bird with the prolapse from the photo above. Her rescuers named her Catherine.

This photo was taken 1 month after her rescue. Veterinary care had fixed her prolapse and she could finally enjoy freedom.

Return from Battery Hens to Egg Laying Chickens
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