• Over 90% of the eggs sold in Australia are caged.
• In Australia, caged eggs come from the 10.5 million caged hens in battery farms.
• A single battery farm can contain thousands of battery hens, stacked in cages five rows high in enclosed sheds.
• Battery hens suffer intensely and continuously throughout their lives.

 

• A battery hen spends her entire life laying cramped inside a shared cage.
• She will never see the sky.
• Each cage holds 3 to 7 hens.
• Each hen's floor area is only 450 cm squared, about 3/4 of the size of an A4 sheet of paper.
• With her wings outstretched, a hen is twice the size of a typical battery cage.

[Image copyright CIWF ]

 

• A battery hen cannot perch, preen, roost, scratch, dust bathe or spread her wings.
• Inside the cage it is impossible for her to walk or exercise.
• She cannot fulfill her most fundamental instinctual drive, to lay her eggs in a nest.
• Hens are so desperate to nest that they will even lay their eggs in the rotting corpses of other chickens.
• These eggs often end up on your breakfast table.

 

• Stressed and over crowded hens peck each other. Cannibalism is common.
• To stop this, a heated blade is used to cut half the upper beak and one third of the lower beak - but chickens are often found with more savage mutilations than that required by industry. This is called de-beaking.
• De-beaking severs the sensitive nerves in the hen's beak. These nerves rarely heal so the hen suffers constantly.
• Many hens die from resulting ulcers, infections and simple starvation.

 

• Half of all chicks born are male.
• Considered useless, they are killed by crushing, mincing or suffocation at 1 day old.

 

• In order to eat, crowded hens push against the wire cages. This rubs off their feathers, leaving sore spots on their necks, chest and other tender areas.
• These sore spots are pecked, ripped and easily infected.

 

• Naturally a hen's claws are worn down from walking.
• Battery hens walk nowhere. Their cages have no floors.
• A caged hen's claws can grow so long that they curl around the wire floor making movement impossible. The hen then starves to death.

 

• Due to confinement and over-production of eggs, caged hens develop extremely brittle bones.
• In cages, bones break easily and frequently.
• By the time the hens are finally slaughtered many are unable to stand and 56% of them have untreated bone breakages and fractures.

 

• Hens normally moult in Autumn and stop laying for 2-3 months to rest.
• Battery farmers reduce this non-productive period by starving the hens in order to bring them back to laying quickly.
• Many hens die of hunger during this process.

 

• To produce more eggs artificial lighting is used to trick the hens into unnatural laying cycles.
• This increases prolapse and tumours, and produces acute calcium deficiency. Eventually the hen's body is weakened and many do not survive.

 

• Chickens have cognitive capacities equal to those of primates and well beyond those of small children. They are intelligent and curious and the cage denies not just her physical needs but also her mental needs.

 

• In a battery farm hens past their laying peak are considered useless.
• In a natural environment a hen lives for 10 years.
• A battery hen will usually last for 1 year.

 

• Hens past peak laying are dragged from their cages, stuffed into crates and trucked to the slaughterhouse. There, they are hung upside down on a conveyor belt to wait for slaughter.

 

• Australian codes of practice are purely voluntary and easy to ignore.
• The NSW Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (POCTA) does not protect factory farmed animals.

 

• Switzerland and Sweden no longer have battery farms.
• The European Union will phase out its cages by 2012.

 

• In Australia, the government has legislated an increase in cage size by a tiny 100 square centimetres by 2008.
• Soon farmers will spend millions implementing this system and will be unwilling to do anything more for decades.
• 80% of Australians surveyed want cages banned.
• Stop buying caged eggs. Tell the supermarket chains, the government, and the farmers that Australians find battery farming disgusting.