Hens Abandoned in Mega Farms

[Catherine]

The fact that there are still cage hens on mega farms is appalling.
It seems there is worse. Hens literally fall through the cracks and end up under the cages. There they survive as best they can on bugs, living on big piles of manure.

http://www.animalsaustralia.org/take_act...ttery-hens

Can you believe that they just leave them there to struggle for survival.

Of course now that the video is out, I shudder to think of what has happened to the hens.

Can you believe how dirty the farms are. Do they never clean out the manure. The fumes must be overwhelming.

[LPC]

Yes, as a young man I remember staying in a house in a good area of Chester for the summer holidays. But it was August - and the smell was terrible for a mile around. Why? There was an massive intensive chicken farm about two miles down the road. When the wind was in the "right" (=wrong!) direction, we stayed indoors or went elsewhere. I asked why nobody complained. I was told that many of the locals had jobs there, or had relatives who worked there. Also, the smell was worst in the summer.

Factory farms are an abomination and show humanity in a poor light. Many people buy "factory" eggs because they are cheaper and couldn't care less whether suffering is caused. Others don't know (still) or don't want to know. But times are changing, slowly.....

[Tobi]

This is so very heartbreaking. I have known hens, and know they have character and individuality, and feel emotions.
This is a genuine animal Holocaust.

Even 'Barn' kept hens are not having a good life by any means. Barn hens are just one step up from cage hens. I live near a Barn egg producer, and wrote a thread a couple of months ago on this section about it -called "Barn Eggs -the Reality."

The animal rescue near were I live does rescue Caged hens, and they are often up for adoption, and taken on by people with experience in poultry-keeping, who will give them a completely new happy life.

[Catherine]

The whole egg producing "industry" has become inherently cruel. The fact that they call it an industry tells us what the problem is. They do not see hens as living creatures.
The fact that birds get dropped under the cages and no one cares is just one more shocking cruelty in a cruel system.
I can't believe how dirty the whole barn is. Shouldn't there be a minimum standard of cleanliness? Are these farms not inspected?
I guess it is yet another example of the industry standard is so low that it is impossible to fail an inspection.
Too bad barn eggs are no better.

A number of our members on the old forum site adopted cage hens. They had wonderful stories of these hens seeing the outside for the first time. Hens deserve a life like that, not the lives they have now.