Egg-laying Systems
Hens in commercial egg production begin their lives at a
chicken-breeding farm. Then at around 20 weeks of age they start a new
life of egg-laying and transfer to one of three systems: cage (sometimes
called 'battery') system, barn system and free-range system.
Cage System
Tens of thousands of hens live permanently in cages in a long dark shed. Hens are crammed several to a cage so tightly they cannot stretch a wing. Numerous sheds like this make up a chicken farm.
Cages are staggered in tiers three to six high and made of wire mesh so that droppings pass through for easy removal (see photo below). Eggs roll away for collection out of reach of the hens on the cages' slopping floors. Feeding, watering, heating, ventilation and electric lighting are automated. No one gives hens individual care because they are cheap and expendable. Workers chuck out seriously ill hens to die with those already dead.
Cage System
Tens of thousands of hens live permanently in cages in a long dark shed. Hens are crammed several to a cage so tightly they cannot stretch a wing. Numerous sheds like this make up a chicken farm.
Cages are staggered in tiers three to six high and made of wire mesh so that droppings pass through for easy removal (see photo below). Eggs roll away for collection out of reach of the hens on the cages' slopping floors. Feeding, watering, heating, ventilation and electric lighting are automated. No one gives hens individual care because they are cheap and expendable. Workers chuck out seriously ill hens to die with those already dead.
 Hens packed together in the same cage. Note the laid eggs rolled for collection into the gutter. Courtesy Farm Sanctuary. |
Barn System
Hens live confined in huge, long, dusty, windowless sheds called barns or percheries. A battery chicken farm consists of many shed like this. Within a shed the hens have litter areas, nest boxes and rows of perches. In theory hens are free to roam about a shed but with up to 16,000 hens per shed there is practically no room. Care and feeding regimes are the same as for hens in the cage system. After a few weeks poultry hands clear out the chickens for slaughter and clean and disinfect the sheds for the next batch of hens.
Free-Range System
'Free-range' suggests that hens live unhindered in green and pleasant fields. Indeed, during daylight hours hens can exercise in fresh air, see real sunlight and get environmental stimulation. But there are downsides. Free-range farms may pack thousands of hens into a few semi-barren acres. (Some countries try to prevent overcrowding with a maximum legal density, eg 1,000 hens per hectare or 2.5 acres in Britain). On large farms less than half the hens may actually venture outside their housing, which can be as poor as the barn system. The lives of free-range hens are as short as caged and barn hens; after about a year of egg-laying they go for slaughter. A variant free-range system is organic free-range, whereby the hens live on organic land and eat organic food.
Welfare
The living conditions of hens, especially caged and barn hens, ensures
hens suffer a wide range of mind and body health problems. Some constant
problems are:
Behaviour
Caged hens especially cannot fulfil basic behavioural needs such as wing flapping, dust bathing, scratching and pecking the ground, perching and nest-building, and laying eggs in a nest. A domestic hen never sees a rooster (her eggs, the ones you see in supermarkets, are unfertilised, though with the same nutritional value as fertilised eggs).
Bones
Hens suffer brittle bones that break easily. The cause is living without sunlight or exercise in cages and barns and a constant loss of calcium by laying so many eggs (shells are made mostly of calcium). They die from paralysis and starvation (unable to reach food) if stock keepers do not find and kill them.
Claws
Caged hens cannot scratch the ground to keep their claws trim. Their claws grow long and twisted and may get trapped in the wire floor of their cage. The hens may then starve or dehydrate to death unable to reach food and water. Stock workers sometimes cut off claws to prevent injury.
Cannibalism & Debeaking
Hens peck and attack each other in their packed cages and barns and suffer serious wounds and feather loss. Ultimately it ends in cannibalism when birds constantly peck a downed bird's wounds. Debeaking is the chicken industry's response to try and diminish this problem - part of a chick's upper beak is sliced off ('no pecker - no problem'). Farm hands debeak birds without applying anaesthetic and hens suffer acute and chronic pain; some die from shock. Beaks are sensitive to touch and contain pain receptors (birds feed by pecking and preen themselves with their beaks so they must feel what they are doing). Without a functioning beak a bird must endure a poor life.
Free-range hens are also at risk. They suffer pecking and cannibalism at some 'free-range' farms and are similarly debeaked.
Behaviour
Caged hens especially cannot fulfil basic behavioural needs such as wing flapping, dust bathing, scratching and pecking the ground, perching and nest-building, and laying eggs in a nest. A domestic hen never sees a rooster (her eggs, the ones you see in supermarkets, are unfertilised, though with the same nutritional value as fertilised eggs).
Bones
Hens suffer brittle bones that break easily. The cause is living without sunlight or exercise in cages and barns and a constant loss of calcium by laying so many eggs (shells are made mostly of calcium). They die from paralysis and starvation (unable to reach food) if stock keepers do not find and kill them.
Claws
Caged hens cannot scratch the ground to keep their claws trim. Their claws grow long and twisted and may get trapped in the wire floor of their cage. The hens may then starve or dehydrate to death unable to reach food and water. Stock workers sometimes cut off claws to prevent injury.
Cannibalism & Debeaking
Hens peck and attack each other in their packed cages and barns and suffer serious wounds and feather loss. Ultimately it ends in cannibalism when birds constantly peck a downed bird's wounds. Debeaking is the chicken industry's response to try and diminish this problem - part of a chick's upper beak is sliced off ('no pecker - no problem'). Farm hands debeak birds without applying anaesthetic and hens suffer acute and chronic pain; some die from shock. Beaks are sensitive to touch and contain pain receptors (birds feed by pecking and preen themselves with their beaks so they must feel what they are doing). Without a functioning beak a bird must endure a poor life.
Free-range hens are also at risk. They suffer pecking and cannibalism at some 'free-range' farms and are similarly debeaked.
End of Hens
Spent Hens
Diseased and stressed the hens suffer a high death rate during their egg laying life. Possibly up to a quarter die. After twelve months of egg-laying the rest are sent for slaughter because they are too weak to continue as egg-layers - they are 'spent'. Being very cheap they finish up in pet food and low-priced human food.
End of Hens
At the end of her egg-laying life a hen is ready for the abattoir. A stock worker grabs her by a leg upside down. Workers gather up hens four or five per hand and pack them into small crates. Bones often brake in the process. Workers stack the crates high in a truck. The hens suffocate for hours in hot weather before the journey begins. Abruptly wrenched out of her crate at the slaughterhouse more bones may break. Day and night 'chicken-hangers' shackle thousands of hens upside down by a leg on an endless conveyer line for automated stunning and dismemberment. (See Transport & Slaughter in Chickens � Broiler Hens.)
 A chicken hanger reaches into a cage to pull out another chicken to hang on the conveyer line at a slaughterhouse. Courtesy Farm Sanctuary. |
Male Chicks
For every female chick in the egg-laying industry there is a male chick. But male chicks are unwanted and must be eliminated. So neck dislocation or decapitation follows for male chicks soon after hatching; or for very large numbers poisoning by carbon dioxide (CO2) gas or mashing alive in a mechanical mincer. Thus for every billion hens, a billion male chicks must die. They go into animal feed, pet food, cheap human food and fertiliser.
Labelling
Most labels on egg cartons in the US have little bearing on welfare, no
legal enforcement of standards, and serve to confuse. In Britain, eggs
from caged hens are sometimes deceptively labelled 'farm-fresh' or
'country-fresh' and their true origin is not stated. However, under new
legislation egg producers in the European Union must, irrespective of
sales blurbs, label their eggs:
Morality
Welfare workers have tried tirelessly to ban cages. Now European Union law bans cages from 2012 (the Laying Hens Directive). However, the chicken industry fought back and the cage system continues with 'enriched' cages. These are slightly bigger than normal cages and include a nest, perches and some sort of litter for the hens to peck and scratch. So the old system remains much the same and hen suffering continues.People give some animals a modicum of consideration, but they give chickens virtually nothing. Crammed into cages or densely packed into sheds, their eggs constantly removed, hens cannot engage in even the most elementary nest-building and mothering behaviour. Even such a fundamental act as stretching their wings is denied them. These are sentient animals, subjects of a life who can suffer and deserve moral standing as much as any other creature. Yet they are granted no rights and their treatment flies in the face of the Five Freedoms of animal welfare.
The chicken industry is a microcosm of man's inhumanity to animals. Humanity gains by keeping a massive human population in as many eggs as it can use and waste in foolish pursuits. In the quest for efficiency and maximum production the chicken industry has lost all touch with its roots on the traditional animal farm and has abandoned every notion of virtue. The industry and the public who willingly, unknowingly or uncaringly support this industry represent humanity at its moral worst. Eating battery and barn eggs (and eggs from dubious free-range farms) is a trivial indulgence of already well fed people that costs hens intolerable lives and appalling deaths.
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