Help make the battery cage history.
The suffering of battery hens is undeniable. The key to change for these sensitive animals rests with each of us. You can take action for hens in three easy steps:
Wield your consumer power at the checkout.
Battery cage egg farms exist because consumers unwittingly continue to financially support cruel practices. What you choose to buy sends a strong message to egg producers. Becoming informed and avoiding cage eggs is critical. But there’s even more to this story that the egg industry has kept from you. Laying hens in all production systems are killed when their egg production wanes — years before their natural life expectancy — resulting in millions of chicks being hatched each year to replace them. Only female chicks are required for egg production, which means millions of unwanted male chicks are gassed or ground up alive each year as 'waste products' of the egg industry. This is why many shoppers are choosing to reduce the number of eggs they buy or purchase egg replacers that are readily available in supermarkets.
Sponsor a radio ad.
Airtime on radio is one of the most cost effective ways to reach thousands of people across the country — but it comes at a price. If you share our vision for a future without battery cages, please give generously today. Every dollar received is precious and will help extend the airtime of this critical radio campaign.
The truth about eggs.
Hens are sensitive and inquisitive animals who have unique personalities and love to problem solve! In battery cages, hens are robbed of all quality of life and are instead treated like production units, rather than thinking, feeling beings who are capable of joy and suffering. Click through the images below to discover what the egg industry never told you.
Unique personalities
Just like us or the family dog or cat, hens are individuals with unique personalities. Depending on where they sit in the pecking order they can be outgoing and sociable or shy and reserved. A trait they all share - hens love to explore and investigate the world around them.
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Say what?
It may sound like cluck cluck cluck to us but hens have at least 30 different calls and they all vary depending on what they are communicating. If there is a threat approaching they can even vary their clucking depending on whether it’s coming by land or over water.
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The pecking order
Hens are sensitive, intelligent animals who live in complex social hierarchies. They can not only recognise 100 other hen faces but they know where each and every one sits on the social ladder.
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Hens get clucky too
Forget playing Mozart, hens cluck softly to their unborn chicks to start teaching them how to communicate before they even hatch. And the chicks chirp back to them from inside their shells.
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Frustrated maternal instinct
A hen’s most natural urge is to lay her eggs in a nest in private. In cages hens are forced to eat, sleep, defecate and lay their eggs in the same small space – standing on a wire mesh floor day and night. For the average shopper it may only be an egg but for a hen every egg represents 30 hours of misery in a battery cage.
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An unnatural life
Most battery hen facilities have no natural light or ventilation so caged hens never experience things as simple as feeling the sun on their feathers. The first day they will see the outside world will be the last day of their lives, as they are trucked to slaughter.
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Beaks cut off
Chronically frustrated in over-crowded cages, hens often take it out on each other by pecking at their cage mates. The egg industry’s solution isn’t to give them more space but instead to painfully slice off the end of their beak with a hot blade or infrared heat.
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Living with broken bones
A lack of exercise causes hens bones1 to become weak, brittle and break easily. Studies have shown that 1 in 6 hens inside battery cages live with broken bones . Compounding this misery, more will suffer breaks as they are pulled from their cages to be sent to slaughter.
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No room to move
Hens in cages spend their entire productive lives existing in less space each than an A4 piece of paper. They have no room to stretch out and flap their wings, perch or express any of the behaviours that nature intended.
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A life cut short
The natural life span of a hen is around 10 years but most layer hens in Australia are sent to slaughter as soon as they exceed their productive 'use by date'. In all egg production systems, from cage to free range, hens are considered 'spent' from just 18 months old.
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Killed at birth
For millions of male layer chicks every year the day they hatch will be the last day of their lives. As they can't lay eggs they have no commercial value so they are gassed or macerated (crushed up) at just one day old. Tragically this is a reality across all egg production.
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1. Parkinson G (1993), "Osteoporosis and bone fractures in the laying hen", Progress report of work at the Victorian Institute of Animal Science, Attwood
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