Mrs Gideon

She came from a Werribee battery egg farm. She had served her 18 months in a tiny cage with 5 other chickens and was sent to the room where they sell “spent” hens to the public for things like soup. She waited in a cage in that room with thousands of other hens. The room was right next door to a cafe that operated on the property. People would come in and get their morning coffee and eggs for breakfast – whilst in the next room, thousands of starving, featherless hens who laid those eggs waited for their next ticket to death.

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She was rescued by a brave person who also saved ten other sickly, featherless girls at the same time. They all made the journey to Lefty’s Place the next day.

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Poor Mrs Gideon had such terribly short beak. All hens who are born into the commercial egg laying industry are de-beaked. Apparently de-beaking helps prevent hens from causing serious injury to each other whilst they are locked up and frustrated in tiny cages of a battery egg farm or when they are living in a flock of 60,000 free range hens who have to fight to keep their place in the hierarchy every single day. De-beaking is done without any pain relief. De-beaking makes it difficult for hens to preen themselves properly and makes it difficult for them to eat certain foods. De-beaking is incredibly cruel.

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Mrs Gideon was named after a character from the comedy series, “The Mighty Boosh”.
She left this world late 2013. I hope the freedom she had in the last years of her life outweighed the misery of the first few years she had. I hope.

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