Hens DON'T belong in cages, no animal does.

Hens also don't belong in cramped barns and intensive 'Free Range' systems where the majority actually spend all their time indoors due to the flock sizes and the small number of pop hole exits to the outside spaces, which can also be barren muddy places.

After commercial hens have spent 72 weeks in some form of confinement they are sent to slaughter. A horrific careless end to a lonely, stressful and often painFULL life.

Life for a commercial hen starts in a hatchery. Millions of eggs are hatched each week in UK hatcheries alone.

At one day old, chicks are sexed. This determines their immediate fate. Male chicks are deemed useless in the egg industry, they are killed because of that. The allowed methods of disposal in the UK are gassing, crushing and maceration (being thrown into a bladed spinner and shredded alive).

There is technology available to sex within the egg, which would remove the requirement for these hideous practices. Germany and France are the first two countries to implement bans on the culling of male chicks by 2024. In-Ovo technology is being heavily invested to bring this to fruition.

We need the UK Government to follow suit.

I am currently checking which petitions are available to push this agenda and will post a link here when I have found something viable.

Female chicks destined for enriched cages, Free Range and Barn systems have their beaks trimmed at one day old and are then sent out to the rearing facilities where they are 'grown' until they are ready to go into their designated laying system. It is not routine in organic systems to beak trim and some organic schemes ban it completely (e.g. UK Soil Association).

Commercial egg laying hens are ALL destined to a premature end, irrespective of the system in which they have spent their production days. 

Between 60 and 70 weeks of age an egg laying hens' productivity starts to reduce. This is termed 'end of lay' and the business' will clear out the population and send the hens to slaughter.

They are too young to die and it doesn't have to be this way.

A hen will naturally live for many years and, if your driver for wanting hens is to have your own eggs then retired commercial hens will continue to lay well after the age of 72 weeks when they are deemed 'unproductive'

Take Blossom, our clan leader, she was rescued from the cages on the 17th December 2018, she is currently laying 6 eggs a week!!