We wandered into a farm in May 2014. One of the free range egg sheds had it’s doors wide open. Dead bodies of chickens were strewn around the outside and inside of the shed. Feather piles were left from where foxes had picked off the left behind living hens. This was a shed that had been recently depopulated. “Depopulation” means that hens are caught and sent to slaughter at 18 months old because they don’t produce enough eggs to be profitable after this age. So, the farmhands caught every hen they could and left the ones who were too hard to catch behind. They left them no water and no food. These girls sat in that open door shed, starving and thirsty and waiting for foxes to come and eat them. A pile of empty beer cans sat up against the wall left behind by farm hands. They drank beer whilst the sweet birds in front of them had nothing.
The first night we were there we rescued some girls, but had to leave some behind because we didn’t have enough hands. The next night, my friend and her friend went back to get the rest of the hens. They found most had had their necks broken and had been stacked in a pile at the shed door. There was a few girls who had escaped this brutality by hiding and they were rescued that night by my friend. One of those girls was Rapunzel.
Rapunzel came to me and was nothing more than skin and bone. Her starving little body was so small and cold that I wasn’t sure she would make it. She got through her recovery stage with flying colours and is now one of the happy, talkative girls who lives at Lefty’s Place. Rapunzel is very particular about her nesting box and will wait all day until it’s free for her to lay her egg. When she finally gets possession of it, her chirps of joy can be heard by all.
Rapunzel is a prime example of the cruelty involved in the free range egg industry. Please remember her skinny little body when you make your food choices.
Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally
The plight of factory produced animals is heartbreaking.
Most people have an old-fashioned idyllic view of animals spending wonderful lives out in the open air before a very quick and humane death for the poultry meat and egg industry. The only chickens like that are on hobby farms. The reality of the purchases we make in city supermarkets is a dark and inhumane secret.
While a few poultry farms will let cameras in, they generally want only the healthy chickens shown. Nothing is shown in regard to cruel debeaking, mincemeating day old live male chicks in a huge conveyor belted grinder (because they ate of no use), or the overuse of drugs to prevent disease in these horrendous warehouses holding tightly packed birds. Nor do the cameras show the workers who are given seconds to work with each bird, resulting in cruel and painful handling.
A typical daily inspection will always reveal dead or dying birds which are tossed to the floor, or on a heap.
The problem with food production on supermarket scales, is that humanity is gone. We are eating stressed, miserable animals full of antibiotics, and growth hormones because a) We demand cheap protein and b)Big Companies, still want big profits. We have become the slave-masters of every living animal. This is such an Alien idea to how life evolved on our planet, we have to really look at human nature and ask where it went wrong?
Go vegan, and be kind to animals of every sort. We must rethink our role in life on planet earth if we are to survive as an ‘enlightened’ and evolving species.
Tamara, your stories of animal rescue are touching. They are the very few lucky ones!