The Price Of Eggs: Commercial Layers’ Tragic Lives

I spend a lot of time on Facebook so many chicken sites pop up in my feed. I’m sure that they’re useful, but I don’t have the time to go down the rabbit hole day after day so I usually scroll by. Several rescue sites have caught my eye and I made the time to read some of their posts. Subsequently I wrote about Belle and Fleur say NO to commercial Eggs (England) and Tikkun Olam Farm Sanctuary (USA).

Two years later, posts from Lefty’s Place Farm Sanctuary appeared in my feed. I reached out to the founder, Tamara, and asked if I could write a profile about her rescue in Australia. I scrolled through her Facebook group and found enough material for three posts. Then Tamara mentioned she was a photographer specializing in animal rights and invited me to check out her photography site. 

I’m sure most folks have seen disturbing photos depicting how many animals – chickens included – are treated in the commercial agriculture business. The ability to know where your food comes from and to ensure birds are treated with respect are probably two of the reasons that have sparked an increased interest in keeping chickens. I think, for many, once they have spent some time with those birds they’re surprised that they form bonds similar to household dogs and cats. I think it’s the realization that chickens aren’t just ‘dumb birds’ with no feelings that makes many small flock keepers rethink their relationships with food and with animals in general.

Large scale ‘factory farm’ layers are referred to as battery hens because historically they have been kept in small cages all joined together in long units. With a little play on words you could also see them as battered hens, because their spirits and bodies have been beaten down by the miserable lives they’ve been forced to lead.

I’m one of those folks that upon hearing a warning for sensitive viewers prefacing radio or television programs change the channel. I know horrible things in this world exist but don’t feel the need to explore them all. There are some images that once seen are difficult to erase from your memory. I understand that I am exercising the luxury of my privilege by looking the other way. Some folks, like Tamara, confront those realities and shine the spotlight on the darker side of how commercial farm chickens live and, unfortunately, die.

This is the first of several posts about Tamara’s work – this one about industrial scale chicken farms, while the following ones feature various chickens she’s managed to rescue and give a second chance at Lefty’s Place Farm Sanctuary.

As you can imagine, someone who is outspoken about animal rights can be a polarizing figure.

I’ve done animal rights photography and rescued animals from farms forever and lots of people (farmers etc) hate me. My turkeys and ducks were killed by trespassers after I went on national TV exposing a poultry abattoir.

I’m not part of an official rescue group. One or two friends and I do this together. We go in at night and rescue hens. I take photos throughout: from their time in the farms until their safe, loved deaths at my sanctuary. It’s a journey and a transformation that I love to document. We never pay for chickens from farmers. I’m in no way interested in ever paying money for hens. It keeps the cycle of abuse continuing, so I never hand money over for chickens and do not understand rescue groups who do.

I know these images are confronting and upsetting and I do apologize, but I do need to show them.

Her beautiful little face peering out of that crate on that truck, peering out on to the area where she would meet her death. 

For every egg you eat, there is a beautiful little face peering out in to a world she never got to experience just before her death. Egg layers are slaughtered in the egg industry before they are just two years old. They are roughly thrown from their cages in to trucks and stuffed in to crates with less care than vegetables. These are thinking feeling animals who we treat as nothing and nobody.

That beautiful little face is no longer here, she was hung upside down, had her throat slit and then was dunked in to boiling water. Her body was ground up and her feathers were just a few of the many stacked high in a bin.

Her beautiful little face and her beautiful little heart and soul deserved so much more.

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This is a cage egg farm in Pearcedale, Victoria. I was standing below the cages In this multi level shed. I was standing in a sea of manure that came up to my waist and I’m pointing my camera up towards the cages. 

This image very clearly shows how much room these hens have and how absolutely miserable their lives are. Imagine yourself trapped here. Imagine.

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This is what a depopulated shed at a cage egg farm looks like. There would have been up to 80,000 hens in this one shed alone. They were all grabbed roughly from these cages, some would have been dropped, most would have had bones broken in the process. They were then all thrown in to crates on a truck and driven to the abattoir where they waited overnight to be slaughtered brutally in the morning.

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Death was everywhere in this shed on this cage egg farm. Dead hens lay all over the floor. Most of them had been thrown to the ground with such force that they had broken limbs and broken necks. Some looked like they had starved to death, unable to move on the floor with their broken bones. It looked as if a worker had been through the farm grabbing hens from their cages and throwing them to the floor – for what reason is unclear, but probably because they looked ill.

Scattered amongst the dead bodies were hens who were still alive, some had broken bones and some were just starved and sitting in shock. We rescued who we could and most were so injured they had to be put to sleep at the vets, but many ran off not knowing we were good people. Not knowing that there were humans out there who wanted to give them more than horror and death.

At the time this photos was taken, we reported this farm to the RSPCA and the DPI, who both did nothing. 

Cruelty to chickens is part of farming, purchasing and eating eggs. Don’t be part of it.

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This is how we found her, her beak clasped around the electric wire that runs the length of the cages, just under where the hens live. This area is where the eggs roll down from the cages to the conveyor belt.

We found her because the wire was shorting out on her beak constantly. This constant buzzing sound alerted us to her. 

How did she get there? Did she die and fall down and strangely get her beak caught? Was she put there? Did she do it on purpose trying to get out of those cages?

When you’re a hen in an egg farm, early death is actually the best and kindest way your life can pan out. If you actually happen to keep living you must bear the depopulation process, the transportation process and the slaughtering process (or the gassing process) – all of which are incredibly violent and incredibly cruel.

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She died like this. There was nothing humane about it. Nothing. She was grabbed and thrown in to this transport crate on Tuesday night. She was literally squashed to death from overcrowding in that crate. After a year and a half living on an egg farm (a farm that produces, cage, barn and free range eggs), this is how it ended for her. 

There’s nothing humane about eggs.

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This is how we found her, her beak clasped around the electric wire that runs the length of the cages, just under where the hens live. This area is where the eggs roll down from the cages to the conveyor belt.

We found her because the wire was shorting out on her beak constantly. This constant buzzing sound alerted us to her. 

How did she get there? Did she die and fall down and strangely get her beak caught? Was she put there? Did she do it on purpose trying to get out of those cages?

When you’re a hen in an egg farm, early death is actually the best and kindest way your life can pan out. If you actually happen to keep living you must bear the depopulation process, the transportation process and the slaughtering process (or the gassing process) – all of which are incredibly violent and incredibly cruel.

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This is the point where their little bodies have nothing left. They are exhausted. They have been used and used without relief and the thanks they are given is death. They are sent to their deaths because they don’t produce enough eggs to be seen as profitable. Truth is that these hens are bred to lay themselves to death. They don’t stop laying until it kills them. This is really why farmers depopulate their farms when the hens are 18 months old, because the amount of hens dying from egg related issues would be astronomical.

These hens were at the abattoir awaiting their terrifying death the next morning. This is what happens to egg layers regardless of what farm they have come from. Cage, barn, free range – they all end up here and they all end up experiencing a death full of fear.

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She lived on a free range egg farm. During the day she sometimes stood outside in a fenced off paddock of bare dirt. At night, she tried to get a spot on the metal poles to roost in the giant shed, but she always failed and had to sleep on the floor. She was a submissive hen and was attacked constantly by different dominant hens trying to establish their leadership in a flock of 40,000 hens. It was unrelenting, she had no rest constantly in fear of attack.

At roughly 2 years old, she was chased whilst in the shed, grabbed and roughly thrown in to a crate on a truck. She was then driven to the abattoir where she was hung upside down on a shackle, and (if she was lucky) had her throat slit before she hit the boiling water. 

This foot on top of a huge pile of bloody feathers is the last thing left of her. 

This is how free range egg layers die.

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All that was left of her was her head. Egg farmers don’t love chickens, personally I think they hate them. This particular farm had decomposing heads on floors in many areas. Someone on staff found it enjoyable to rip the heads off these sweet, funny, clever birds and leave them decomposing on the shed floor.

There’s no kindness or love on an egg farm. None. Hens are seen as mere egg machines. This applies to free range farms as well.

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Here she sat. Unable to move.

Starved for a week or more. Weak and dehydrated. The free range egg shed she lived in was cleared out a week ago. All her friends were sent to slaughter because they were no longer producing enough eggs at 18 months of age. She evaded being caught. The shed door was left wide open and foxes came in every night and took her remaining friends. In this image, you can see the feathers of her friend taken by a fox not long ago. 

Here she sat. Waiting for death.

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“Help Us”

Starving, thirsty and crushed. They ask for our help. They gasp for air with their heads and necks stuck through the holes in the transport crates. They are at the abattoir. They are slaughtered at sunrise. They are hens who have come from cage egg, barn egg and free range egg farms. Yes, FREE RANGE EGGS FARMS. 

There’s no kind egg. They all get slaughtered. They all die terrified, screaming for their lives and pleading for help.

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Battery egg farms often have manure pits. They are underneath the cages in the chicken sheds and this is where all the chicken manure goes. Chickens actually live in these pits from either being thrown down there or from falling out of the cages during depopulation. The flocks of chickens who live in these pits live on mounds of manure that go up to my chest or more. I know, I sank down into it many times. It’s like quicksand made of manure. They live off whatever food they can find including their own eggs. Many girls get trapped in the manure and can’t get out (like this hen) and die from dehydration and starvation. There are dead trapped chickens everywhere in the manure pits. 

Yes, this girl was rescued and lived at Lefty’s Place Farm Sanctuary for many years. Her name was Prudence, but there were many we couldn’t save and there are so many trapped in manure pits right now.

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She sat there in that crate at the abattoir like a prisoner. She was a prisoner. She was a prisoner to our food choices. She was a prisoner to her body that had been selectively bred to lay an egg a day so we could feast on them. She was a prisoner to humans. She sat there with her beautiful face leaning on that crate, with her egg sitting beneath her and she had given up. Resigned to her fate. A prisoner sent to death because of what her reproductive system produced.

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This is a shackle at a poultry abattoir. Chickens are grabbed from crates and slammed on to this contraption. They hang here, by their feet, until they die. The shackles are attached to a conveyor belt that then takes the chickens on to the killing floor, their throats are slit (many are missed) and then they are dumped in to boiling water. A large percentage go in to the boiling water without their throats slit and are still alive.

The eggs you eat come from hens who suffer and die like this when they are under 2 years old. If you purchase eggs then you have caused this horror for these beautiful and intelligent birds who just wanted to live. They so desperately just wanted to live.

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We all die, but we don’t all die like this.

She didn’t die a peaceful death. She wasn’t comforted by the human who loved her the most on a vet table as she slipped away. She wasn’t tucked in her warm bed when she died in her sleep. She wasn’t lying in the sun in her safe space when she died…..no, she died in prolonged agony. 

She died in a transport crate on the way to an abattoir. She had been so roughly handled when she was taken out of the battery cage she had lived in that she had suffered broken bones and internal bleeding. She had been kicked or thrown against something. She may have been stomped on. She had then been stuffed in to a packed transport crate full of other hens and left to suffer for many hours before she died. 

It wasn’t a peaceful end. None of them have a peaceful end. Her death was anything but peaceful. 

This is what happens to hens in the egg industry. 

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She wouldn’t look at me. She just sat there, broken mind, broken body, broken spirit and broken soul. She wouldn’t even look at me. Battery cage hens usually either look at me in terror or with hope that I may save them , but this girl, this girl was just beyond it all. She just wouldn’t look at me.

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Thanks to Tamara Kenneally for sharing her stories and photos, used with permission.

For more info and to support Tamara’s work check out her photography page and Lefty’s Place Farm Sanctuary.

If you, like me, found these photos heart-breaking stay tuned for the next posts of some happy endings for hens at Tamara’s rescue farm.