Rescue & Adoptions

Healthcare with Heart Stories

Surviving Battery Cage Cruelty

Victims of modern-day factory farming, Angie and her friends were born to lay eggs. In the eyes of the egg producers who "owned" them, they were mere commodities, valued solely as production units. The horrible condition in which the hens arrived at Farm Sanctuary revealed just how little these "owners" cared about the welfare of their birds.

Angie and her five companions were lucky to be alive when they reached the hospital facility at our New York Shelter. Two other hens who arrived with them died before Farm Sanctuary staff could help them. The tenacious survivors were filthy, emaciated, and suffering from feather loss.

Caregivers immediately put the dehydrated hens on much needed electrolytes and gave them special supplemented feeds to aid in weight gain. Each of the hens was carefully cleaned up and Angie and Patrice were treated for abscesses. Patrice, who arrived with a severely deformed beak, was also observed closely for any signs of discomfort resulting from the misalignment of her beak.

Two of the other chickens, Eloise and Susan, appeared to be what the industry would call "spent" hens (hens no longer in production) and older than the rest of their friends. Both had more than 1/2 pound of matted feathers and feces caked to each of their legs. The feathers and fecal material had been attached to their legs for so long and had hardened to such a degree that it could only be removed from the birds after their legs and feet were soaked in warm water for more than twenty minutes. Even then, caregivers had to use sharp clippers and pliers to remove the crippling masses from the hens' bodies.

Sadly, the suffering these birds endured is commonplace among layer hens housed in overcrowded and industrialized egg production warehouses. Driven by high consumer demand and the promise of ever-increasing profit margins, producers have turned egg farms into egg factories. Over ninety-percent of the eggs produced in this country now come from hens housed in battery cages, wire cages so small that the birds cannot stand comfortably or even stretch their wings. More than 300 million layer hens languish within the walls of modern egg factories each year in the United States. Stacked row upon row in their cages, covered in the feces of the birds living above them, and housed in total darkness in dismal, foul-smelling barns, most layer hens are denied the right to exercise their most basic instincts, to spread and flap their wings, to dust bathe, and to scratch in the dirt.

Genetically engineered to produce more than 4 times the number of eggs they would lay in nature, factory farmed hens are often "used up" after only one or two years in production. When their egg production levels drop, these "spent" hens are sent to slaughter.

Fortunately, Angie and her friends have escaped this fate. Angie and Susan are walking normally now, rid of the cumbersome weight they carried around on their legs for so long. All of the hens have grown in new feathers, regained healthy color in their skin, and have made many friends in our chicken barn. Courageous ambassadors for their species, these special girls prove to all they meet that farm animals are worthy of our admiration and deserve to be treated with kindness and respect.