Fine Art Animal Photography

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Phoenix

In Greek mythology a phoenix is a long-lived bird that is cyclically regenerated or reborn.

As I held a small, almost dead hen in a pillowcase on my lap in the car, I could barely feel her breathing. I didn’t know if she’d make the trip home, let alone the next day, the next week or year. She was found in a cage at a battery egg farm. She was found trapped under the dead body of her friend. They had both got trapped in the small opening of the cage where the eggs roll through into the collection trays.

Phoenix on the right, trapped underneath the hen on the left.

Both hens would have been trapped for perhaps anywhere up to one week. Hens in battery egg farms are keep in tiny cages with 4-6 hens trapped together. They only have a slopped wire floor to stand on, can barely move, cannot dust bathe, cannot scratch and forage, cannot walk, cannot run, cannot stretch their wings, cannot lay their eggs in private, cannot see the sky, cannot feel the earth and cannot do anything that you and I take for granted. The are inprisoned for life because they are hens and can produce eggs for us. Phoenix was lucky. She wasn’t helped out of that cage by the farmer who runs the sheds of 150,000 trapped hens and makes money out of their eggs, she was saved by brave and selfless rescuers who just knew they needed to get her out. As I held her on that long trip home, i decided to name her “Pheonix” in the hope she could rise from the ashes of her past.

Surprisingly, Phoenix survived the trip home and received immediate medical treatment from her new carer. Phoenix was barely conscious, paralysed and barely breathing. Without being able to eat and drink for many days, her body had nearly given up. Being squashed underneath her friend for countless days had also had a profound effect on her weak body.

Phoenix smelt like death having been trapped under a dead chicken for so long.

Phoenix when we got her home.

She was paralysed and in a great deal of pain. She couldn’t drink or eat for herself. As she was held and cared for that first night she was told how she was loved and how she would fight to live and breathe in the fresh air and be free to be a chicken when she got better. She was told how she could come and live with me and Baldy, Boudica, Casper, Super Chicken and the rest of the flock in the country. She was loved and held and she found joy in the warmth from the heater where she stretched out her wings and purred. She took her first steps and explored the garden and saw the sky. She purred when she was stroked.That first week she was getting better and we expected her to be fully recovered in roughly a months time.

Phoenix took a turn for the worst two and a half weeks after her rescue. Her little body had been so taxed by her past that she just couldn’t make it. She died purring with her head in her carer’s hand. In the last two and a half weeks of her life she experienced as much love and care any chicken has ever had. She had around the clock care and around the clock love. She is buried under her carer’s window, who misses her greatly.

Phoenix was an individual treated like nothing, not just by one farmer, but by a society of human beings. We have condemned each and every beautiful, special little hen to lives of hell just like this. We see them as a commodity and as property when they are all unique souls with their own lives and wishes and hopes. I wish I could say that Phoenix’s story was one of a kind and never to be repeated, but this happens to chickens in battery egg farms all over the world. They are trapped forever until we all stop demanding to buy eggs. An egg is not worth the lives of billions and billions of beautiful hens.

Phoenix – The first time she stood up on her own. (Photo courtesy of her carer)

Phoenix rose from the ashes of her past for two and a half weeks after a lifetime of hell. She saw more than most battery hens ever get to see and even though she struggled to walk, she walked further than most battery hens ever get to walk. Fly free sweet Phoenix. You wont be forgotten.

Phoenix

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

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Isabella Ireland - May 31, 2013 - 9:09 am

What a memorable story. It helps us understand what’s really important. Thank you for sharing.

Pauline Vezina Landry - May 17, 2013 - 8:10 pm

God bless you. Phoenix runs free in a far better place than this cruel world.

Rimona Gherson - May 16, 2013 - 1:43 pm

may you never EVER have to come back here. be free from us always.

Simone Erika Goodfellow - May 16, 2013 - 1:40 pm

Phoenix deserved so much more than a life of torture and pain. How dare some think this is okay. To cry for a hen is seen as stupid but I will cry and fight for her and all the millions of hens still in the dark.

Sheila Donoghue - May 16, 2013 - 1:38 pm

Im vegan

Sheila Donoghue - May 16, 2013 - 1:37 pm

Thankyou for giving her those 2 and half weeks of love

Lisa Onebyone Franklin - May 16, 2013 - 1:35 pm

RIP Beautiful girl ♥ Never forgotten ♥.

Lisa Onebyone Franklin - May 16, 2013 - 1:34 pm

RIP Beautiful girl <3 Never forgotten <3.

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Born To Die (The Life of A Broiler Chicken)

Chicken meat. One of the most accessible meats available. One of the cheapest meats available. The meat that women on a diet reach for. The meat you can have in your sandwich for lunch, for your roast dinner or in your salad as a snack. Having not eaten meat for nearly 20 years now, I have heard this many times – “What? You don’t eat meat? Not even chicken?!!”. No, not even chicken. You see chicken meat actually comes from a little animal who can feel pain, who can make decisions, who can make emotional connections and who is essentially not that different to us. Chickens are thinking, feeling sentient beings yet they are treated as nothing in our society by the majority of people.

A broiler chick, one week old.

Chicken meat does not come from an ex-laying hen who has had a good life and it does not comes from a chicken who has had years of free range freedom. Chicken meat comes from baby chickens, chickens as young as 5-7 weeks old who still chirp and still have baby blue eyes. These selectively bred chicks are hatched and then put straight into massive sheds that can hold up to 40,000 – 60,000 chickens per shed. A farmer who has many sheds on his property can “grow” several million chickens per year. These chicks are left to their own devises for the next 5-7 weeks of their lives…the only 5-7 weeks of their lives. The sheds are lined with automatic feeders and waterers. As the chickens grow, the room for each chicken gets smaller and smaller. Chickens are trapped in their own waste. Chickens die slow and painful deaths from respiratory disorders due to constantly breathing in air from an uncleaned shed.

Broiler chickens have been selectively bred over many years to grow incredibly large in the shortest amount of time possible. At 5 weeks old, a broiler chick looks like an adult bird. Because of these rapid growth rates, many chickens in these sheds will become crippled due to their bodies being too large for their legs to carry. They wont be able to get up and eat or drink and will slowly starve to death. At 5-7 weeks when it’s time for them to be slaughtered, the chickens are roughly picked up in bunches by one leg and thrown into a transport truck. At this point, it is the only time these lovely birds ever get to see the sky….and it will be their last that they get to see it, all because humans believe their tastebuds are more important that an individual’s life.

Thousands and thousands of baby chickens trapped in a shed until slaughter.

Broiler chickens have a very special place in my heart. I’ve found them to be gentle, sweet individuals who create loving and emotional bonds with their friends and the people who care for them. They grieve deeply for their best friends and find comfort in a human who protects and nutures them. To rescue broiler chickens from their fate is a rewarding, yet also heartbreaking undertaking. To see these lovely chickens enjoying the sun on their faces, eating grass and dust bathing is a pure joy. But, to see them struggle with their enormous weight and know that one day soon you will loose them due to their massive bodies and all the health problems that go along with that can often be a heavy burden on your heart. Taking on broiler chickens, you need to know that one day very soon you’ll be burying them because of their genetic problems. To be able to bury a broiler chicken with respect in their favourite spot in the garden is always so difficult, not only because you’ve lost a very important family member, but also because you know about the billions and billions and billions of other innocent and sweet individuals who never get the chance to be buried. Their bodies are eaten instead of being laid to rest.

My special rescued broiler chicken best friend. Summer. She only lived to 6 months old because of her size and died of heart related problems.

The broiler chickens in these particular images are only a week old. Curious, innocent and sweet, all they really want at this age is a mother’s comfort, protection and love – something they will never know.

Innocent baby.

This series is a work in progress and will feature broiler chicken sheds full of baby chickens ranging between the ages of 0-7 weeks old. I very rarely use black and white in any of my images, but this series seems to call for it. It symbolises the lack of colour in these chickens short lives. They experience nothing.They are born. Fattened up. Killed. Then eaten. Eaten with the the utmost disrespect. They are treated as nothing. They are not nothing. They are each an individual like you or I, yet, they are born to die.

Born To Die (The Life of A Broiler Chicken)

Tamara Kenneally Photography

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

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Tamara Kenneally - June 14, 2013 - 11:03 pm

Free Range chicken is still a terrified baby chicken Cathy, how is that better?

Nicole Thibault - June 7, 2013 - 12:23 am

I can imagine how hard it must have been for you to photograph all those precious sweet living beings while they suffer so much :’( You are an incredibly good photographer Tamara Kenneally and I have much much respect for you and your work. Thank you for showing the world! From my forever vegan heart to yours <3.

Tamara Kenneally - June 2, 2013 - 12:41 pm

Sorry Jana, but I believe in giving the animals back to the animals. Farmers should find another way of making money rather than exploiting another thinking, feeling being for it.

Jana Java - June 2, 2013 - 10:31 am

I hope you vegans will see that you should not be against people who want these atrocities to stop. You should ask them to join the good fight to demand factory farming be stopped. Farmers (Not factories) are stewards of animals) I am a meat eater but cannot stand how these animals are mistreated. give them back to the farmers so they can have a good life and then be used to feed people. I hope you see this will not stop if you cannot accept meat eating people as people who want them treated humanley. More might be accomplished if you had a more open mindset to us. Banning together is the only way to stop this cruelty…..

BAAC - May 17, 2013 - 9:07 am

The only way to stop this unnecessary cruelty is to go vegan. Free Range does not work.

Deb Brad - May 17, 2013 - 5:19 am

Go vegan…..this is evil.

Pat Nelson - May 16, 2013 - 11:40 pm

When I went to a farm once to get hay, they had one broiler chicken, who had somehow escaped the trip to the slaughter house, and they gave her to me. I had her for less than 2 weeks; she had stage 4 bumble foot, it turns out, and apparently, my vet told me, that the infection was already in her bones and she could not be saved. She was a wild little thing for exactly 1 day. And then because she knew I was trying to make her better, and made sure she got food and a safe comfortable place to sleep, she would hobble across the grass (she walked on her hocks) to meet me so that I could pick her up and carry her into her sleeping spot in the workshop each night. She was so patient while I treated her feet, usually eating an entire peach during the process. RIP Eileen. At least she rests in a marked grave, unlike the millions and millions that are eaten. She was one sweet girl. Lovely pictures, thank you. If you can just make people think about WHO they are eating, you will save more girls like Eileen.

Kathy Ryder - May 16, 2013 - 11:27 pm

Thank you for the work you do Tamara. I’m happy to be able to say that I’m vegan.

Red Sonja - May 16, 2013 - 10:13 pm

Do not support any form of animal exploitation! GO VEGAN <3

Tamara Kenneally - May 12, 2013 - 12:17 pm

No. Do not support free range chicken. Free range chicken is still a baby chicken who is 5-7 weeks old who is terrified and has a right to live and was NOT born just so you could eat him or her.

Cathy Lai - May 12, 2013 - 9:23 am

Support free range chicken

Friday, April 26, 2013

The Price Of Eggs

I often watch people at the egg section at the supermarket, about 1 in 10 people stop and take their time to think about their egg choice. The other people, well, they automatically reach for the cheapest eggs and open the lid to check them. In that one selfish action, they are condemning 11 million hens in this country to an absolute life in hell. The life these chickens experience is a tiny cage. A tiny cage next to another tiny cage which has rows and rows of tiny cages on top of it and rows and rows of tiny cages below it. These cages are all filled with between 4-6 chickens. These chickens cannot move much at all. They spend their lives standing on wire. They spend their lives standing in the one spot in a cage. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that that is your life? We do it to them just so we can eat their eggs.

6 hens spend their life here 24/7.

Hens stand on wire for their whole life.

Eggs have become such a staple food in our diet, that it is barely thought about by the average joe, but eggs come from hens and hens that are used and abused by humans in the most disgusting ways. A battery egg farm consists of shed apon shed filled with small cages layered on top of each other. Just one farm can trap up to 150,000 hens. Chickens are naturally happy animals, whose joys are directly connected to the earth. Chickens love to scratch and forage in the earth, they need to bathe in dirt to get clean, they sunbake in delight in the sun and hens make nests in private areas to lay their eggs. In a battery egg farm, they experience none of this. They are put into the cages and left there for 18 months until they no longer produce eggs and then they are ripped out of those cages. slaughtered and replaced with younger hens.

This hen is trapped under a dead hen

The image above depicts a situation which is all too common in battery egg farms. The chicken on the left is dead. The chicken on the right is still alive…barely. Along the rows and rows of aisles with the rows and rows of cages, there are many dead hens to be seen. They are dead in the cages being stood on by other hens. They are dead on the ground, this happens when they fall out of/ or escape their cage somehow and fall to their deaths. The chicken on the right of this imaage was rescued. I held her on my lap the whole way home and could barely feel her breath. She had been crushed under that chicken and had been without food and water for many days. I named her Phoenix in hope that she would rise from the ashes of her horrific past. After two weeks of getting better and being able to walk on grass and feel the sun on her back, Phoenix passed away. The batteries cages rob these birds of everything. They rob them of life.

Phoenix getting emergency treatment one hour after her rescue.

After reading all this and looking at these images, you are probably saying to yourself “But I buy free range, I’m not part of this problem” Eggs labelled free range can be misleading. Various “free range” eggs are actually cage eggs. Research is incredibly important if you must buy eggs. You also have to remember that free range isn’t inherently a kind choice. For every hen in the free range system, there was a male chick who was tossed aside like rubbish because they are no use to the egg industry. These baby male chicks are either gassed or ground up alive in their millions. In the end, you need to remember that your choice is condemning millions of gentle, sweet birds to a life of hell. Is your conscience and your heart big enough to care? If you can’t afford the kindest eggs possible, GO WITHOUT, it’s not that difficult. Use your heart over your head (and stomach).

The following slideshow is the beginning of my series “The Price Of Eggs” and is a work in progress.

The Price Of Eggs

Tamara Kenneally Photography

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

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Tamara Kenneally - June 14, 2013 - 11:04 pm

Thank you very much!

Christina Richardson - June 12, 2013 - 10:07 am

Hi Tamara,

Good for you to have the courage to take photographs of this tragedy which is pervasive throughout the world. Please keep up the good work and keep the awareness growing. Let us as humans have the foresight and the compassion to treat our fellow neighbors on this planet kindly and with respect. Thank you again.

AK Rowe - June 11, 2013 - 11:22 pm

SPCA approved eggs and meat

Keren Barcas - June 11, 2013 - 10:50 pm

So sad to see, I love my happy free ranging hens

Deb Shuman - June 11, 2013 - 10:47 pm

Even free range you have to read carefully. I buy from a farm called small flock who have their hands out on the grass. Yes they cost a lil more but eat less for crying out loud. Instead of 3 eggs for breakfast have two.

Fiona Miller - June 7, 2013 - 6:04 pm

I always buy freerange eggs but if they are cheap free range i dont buy them

Isabella Ireland - May 31, 2013 - 8:50 am

Thank you for your compassion and education. YOu are doing a wonderful and much needed work.

Myriam Ingels - May 31, 2013 - 7:26 am

STOP THIS PLEASE !!!!!THIS IS CRUEL,EVIL,BARBARIC,HORRIBLE,SAD AND SO WRONG !!!!!!!

Laura - May 2, 2013 - 2:22 am

God Bless you for shedding light on such inhumane treatment.

Kerrie Picker - April 29, 2013 - 11:06 pm

Hi Tamara, I am a small free range egg farmer. I am appalled to see people choosing the cheapest option when I would imagine 90 percent of the adult population are aware of battery farms and your photo’s are the real the representation of these farms. I do local markets with my eggs priced at 5.00 per dozen in NSW Australia. The comment that they are to expensive, which I have a hard time understanding I hear often. Whilst free range hens do pick and graze outside all day they still need to be fed as well. The cost of good quality feed to keep your hens healthy and extra’s like cartons are costly, I only break even but I do this as I love my girls and love to introduce free range eggs to everyone. I have converted lots of people with the taste and freshness you don’t get this from those eggs, stressed birds can’t lay good quality and tasting eggs. Sorry for the long comment I am passionate about the well being of animals and I love my happy hens.

John Martin Moore - April 29, 2013 - 12:24 am

I have a friend Dave who told me he cracks a couple of the battery hens eggs whenever he buys the organic free range ones, while whispering fook the bastards under his breath.

Tamara Kenneally - April 28, 2013 - 9:20 pm

Here is a link for you Nikolay http://www.animalsaustralia.org/features/eggs-demystified.php
This is an Australian link, so if you are in another country, I’m afraid you’ll have to do your own research. Google and email is your friend, don’t be afraid to use them. Tricking people? Yes, I am sure that’s what I’m doing.

Lynda Kelly - April 28, 2013 - 7:14 pm

Hi Tamara, fantastic work and photo’s bringing home the truth. As a fellow photographer and passionate about the rights of animal and humans I am inspired to do more, thankyou Lynda x.

Nikolay Jordanov - April 28, 2013 - 1:44 pm

So what eggs can we buy if the Free Range ones are no different? You say “if you can’t afford the kindest eggs…” – I can, but which ones are they (in the supermarkets)? I hope you have an answer, otherwise you are just tricking people.

Keri Whitehead - April 28, 2013 - 6:03 am

I read the blog entry and feel incredibly sad. I do buy free range but agree that does not alleviate the myriad of issues concerning this industry. Poor creatures.

Robyn Mitchell - April 28, 2013 - 5:51 am

A great reminder about the effects of our choices as consumers…

Carla Bryan Beardshaw - April 28, 2013 - 3:55 am

extremely well written Tamara – brilliant work. I know that if most people knew where their food came from they would take more thought when purchasing – its a shame so many people don’t want to know.

Heather Burrough - April 27, 2013 - 2:15 am

Great sensitive images and message. Well done

Friday, April 26, 2013

Regina George Can See The Sky

Rescued ex-battery hen, Regina George, has been able to look up to the sky now for 13 days.

She had never seen the sky before, never seen grass and never felt dirt beneath her. She was imprisoned in a tiny cage with 5 other hens so that humans could eat her eggs. It is not our right to take these freedoms away from another living being. Not our right at all.

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

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Tamara Kenneally - June 14, 2013 - 11:05 pm

Thank you so very much! Ex-battery hens really do love their lives.

Erica Challis - June 8, 2013 - 2:33 am

Beautiful photo. Thanks for the work you are doing to expose this outrageous treatment of animals.
We have a shaver hen who we think is ex-battery, since her beak is clipped. She arrived as a normal healthy hen, so somebody must have built her up to full health before we got her. We love her. She is the sweetest, most affectionate animal and enjoys life so much.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Pancho

Pancho is many things. Cute. Angry. Head strong. Stubborn. Funny. Sweet. Jealous.

Pancho is so many things. He is so much more than a face standing in a line at an abattoir. Much more than a roast leg of lamb in a supermarket aisle and so much more than the number on his old purple ear tag. If Pancho wasn’t lucky enough to have been rescued that night from the abattoir I wouldn’t know how many things he is. I wouldn’t know how upset he gets when he misses out on a treat and paws at my leg till he gets one. I wouldn’t know that he hates the dog so much he wants to kill him. I wouldn’t know that he gets so angry when he doesn’t get food when he wants it, that he head-butts the back door. I wouldn’t know how he pretends not to like you and then out of nowhere comes and touches his face up against your face as if he’s saying “I’m sorry, I still like you”

Pancho gives J a kiss

Pancho stood with his lamb friends at the abattoir in the early hours of the morning one day in January 2013. When he was caught and lifted up over the barriers, he didn’t know how lucky he was. Pancho didn’t want to leave his friends, whose futures were coming to an end in roughly 20 minutes time. The sounds and animal cries from the abattoir muffled the sound of Pancho’s rescue. He transported to our place and now lives a fear free life with Righty, Junior, Cosmo and Limpy.

Each and every sheep in a flock is an individual who is so many different things. Each and every sheep is terrified when they are slaughtered to be your food.

Pancho is a very lucky sheep. If only they all could be so lucky.