Immense, frightening, smelling of death and disease, huge barns sit on vast stretches of land. From a distance, you can get an eerie sense of the overwhelming number of birds who live day after day, minute after minute, inside the long windowless sheds.

Eggs are laid by chickens who are imprisoned in filthy tiny cages, and their lives are of frustration, misery and pain. Due to population growth and the increase in demand, humans have created one of the worst oppressive and destructive systems ever in history, which affect every aspect of these animals’ lives.

Artificial Insemination

The industrialization of the chickens begins before they are even born. Chickens in the egg industry are impregnated by artificial insemination, which is a euphemism for rape.
Before the artificial insemination process starts, the farmer restrains the male bird and forcibly obtains semen by squeezing the bird's genitals. In many cases, this procedure causes bleeding as a result of injuries to the gutter tissue or the genitals. Next, the female is held down while the inseminator presses strongly on her stomach and back to accentuate her vagina. Then he inserts a tube into her bulged vagina with a circulatory movement. The tube is attached to a syringe containing the semen. This is how chicks come into the world.

The Hatchery

The chicks are born in incubators inside the hatchery. A single hatchery can rear 70,000 to 110,000 chicks at once.

They are reared intensively from birth and when reaching sexual maturity at the age of 18 weeks, they are sent to battery farms where they are crammed into cages, stacked in tiers.

Since laying hens are bred to be lean, eat little and lay a lot, the males who are unable to lay eggs, and are too skinny to be exploited in the flesh industry, are not profitable – therefore unwanted.

These one day old chicks are tossed alive into a grinding machine, or being suffocated with carbon monoxide, or tossed alive into garbage cans as everyday trash, left to suffocate as other bodies pile on top of them. The upper layers starve to death, or die of cold. That is the fate of 6.5 billion chicks a year. 206 every second.

Battery Cages

The battery hen spends all her laying life in a cage, crammed with three and up to ten other birds. She is sentenced to life in a space equivalent of less than a standard A4 sheet. Their bodies are so tightly compressed that when a single hen attempts to move, the entire population of the cage feels the pressure and responds with an outburst of shrill cries. They cannot find a single normal body posture during their whole life. Try to imagine the frustration, the boredom and the stress that this system creates. The hens are crowded so tightly, that they cannot even stretch their wings or legs and they cannot fulfill basic behavioral patterns or social needs. Constantly rubbing against the wire cages, they suffer from severe feather loss and their bodies are covered with bruises and abrasions.

The feet and legs of chickens, which are suited for an outdoor life of scratching the ground in search for food, contain complex joints full of tiny bones, tendons, muscles and ligaments. However, battery cage hens never stand on anything but a wire cage floor, and coupled with the fact that the hens are unable to properly exercise their legs, it results in painful, often crippling deformities of the legs and feet. Hens' claws, which naturally get shorter and blunt from use, grow long and twisted. In some cases the claws grow around the floor of the cage, immobilizing the hens completely. Unable to reach the food, many starve to death.

In many places the egg factories are almost completely automated. Feeding, lighting, temperature, and even egg collection are controlled by machines. The eggs roll to a conveyor belt which carries them out of the cage. Conveyor belts also deliver food and water to the cages, which are stacked in several tiers.

Dim electric lights are kept on for 16 or 17 hours a day, artificially stimulating the hens' biological rhythms of reproduction. During 'lights on' in a battery cage facility, the atmosphere is one of intense distress. The automatic feeders are operated too. This forces hens to battle for a spot at the front of their tiny, overcrowded cage. Those who are too weak to move towards the feeding tray lie silently on the wire floor, trampled by their cage mates, slowly starving to death.

Natural Behaviors

Under natural conditions, hens display complex behaviors such as perching, foraging, nesting and dust-bathing. The close confinement in cages denies the opportunity to perform any of these activities. The deprivation causes chronic suffering and social conflict among cage mates, including bullying and feather-pecking.

Chickens dust-bath to improve plumage condition, and rid layers of skin, mites, dirt, excess oil etc. They peck at the ground, then squat in the dirt and shake vigorously to work the dust up into their feathers. Birds are so motivated to dust bathe that in spite of the injuries and the bruises, they try to dust bathe again and again on the wire cage floors.

Hens are also motivated to scratch and forage for food. In natural conditions, they may spend much of the day foraging. This behavior is suppressed in battery cages, leading to compulsive behavior such as feather pecking.

Hens are strongly motivated to perch (sit and sleep on a branch). They spend third of the day perching and almost the entire night. It is not a preference - it is a need. It has been found that when perching is possible, there is a reduction of feather pecking and feather damage, and when it is not, there is increased aggression, reduced bone strength, impaired foot condition, and higher feather loss. All are common in all commercial egg industries including "free range".

Laying

In battery cage facilities, eggs are not laid, they are manufactured.
Taking an egg from a chicken will automatically force her to start producing another one (it takes less than 24 hours). However, the "stealing eggs" method is not enough. In order to reach the "profit satisfactory degree", the egg industry genetically manipulates chickens to lay 15 times the amount of eggs they would produce naturally.

Each hen produces about 300 eggs per year. This is twice as many eggs as a hen produced 50 years ago, and it is compared with only about 20 eggs produced each year by their wild ancestors. The chickens are nothing but egg machines.

Like hens in the wild, modern hens need a safe, private place to lay eggs. No chance for that, of course, when being caged with so many other birds. The process can take up to an hour or more, during which they will attempt to hide from their cage mates. The frustration often makes them aggressive. Hens lay eggs because it is a bodily function which they have no control over, it is not at all an indication of their physical condition or how they feel.

With no space or cover, the mere act of laying in a battery cage becomes an ordeal in itself. Battery hens are also denied the opportunity to perform normal pre-laying activity such as nest building. The stress and frustration that follow may result in stereotypical behavior such as repetitive attempts to build a nest. This is probably one of the most severe distresses of hens in battery cages.

Diseases:

Uterus "Prolapse"

Modern eggs are too big to be laid, consequently the hens suffer from uterus "prolapse". Huge eggs pushed through the vagina of small birds, wear out the uterus that is forcefully strained day after day to eject the huge eggs. The result is a prolapsed uterus to the state that it is dragged on the wire cage floor.

Osteoporosis

Calcium deficiency and osteoporosis are rampant among hens in egg factories caused by intensive egg production and inadequate exercise. The quantity of calcium for yearly egg production a hen will use is 30 times greater than her entire skeleton. Inadequate calcium results in broken bones, paralysis, and even death. About 35% of all mortalities during the laying cycle are attributable to bone fragility.

Fatty Liver Hemorrhagic Syndrome

The battery cage has created an ugly new disease of laying hens called fatty liver hemorrhagic syndrome, characterized by an enlarged, fat, friable liver covered with blood clots, pale combs and wattles covered with dandruff.

Debeaking

If five humans were squashed into a phone booth, they would probably become aggressive after a few minutes.

Hens have a 'pecking order', which refers to the natural hierarchy in a flock. In the cages, frustrated natural urges lead to more aggressive pecking, and the weaker hens who cannot escape, suffer the most. With no escape, these hens must endure constant physical assault by the other hens. Debeaking is carried out to reduce the damage of this behavior.

Egg producers routinely debeak chicks at 1-10 days old by cutting off up to half of the upper part of the beak and a third of the bottom with a red-hot blade or wire. This procedure is sometimes called "beak trimming".

If the beaks have regrown, the producers debeak a second time just prior or during the laying period. Many die within 24 hours of the shock and blood loss of debeaking and many others are debeaked a third time as a result of poor procedure given the speed of the handlers that debeak 12-15 birds a minute, one bird every 4 - 5 seconds.

Besides the immediate pain, there are also long-term effects because the beak contains sensitive nerves, which are exposed by the cutting. Because the chicks’ beak is tiny and the process is mechanical and executed with "production line" speed, the beak is often excessively cut, exposing the nerves which cause severe pain every time the hens eat.
Debeaking is done to offset the effects of the compulsive pecking which is the result of imprisoning birds that have the urge to roam, scratch, and peck at the ground all day.

Battery Cages "Cancellation"

As of January 2012, the European Union Council Directive 1999/74/EC, which was mistakenly referred to as the battery cage cancellation, came into force. But what was entitled back in 1999 by many animal rights activists as the cancellation of the worst factory farming practice, turned out to be merely a rebranding. The name was canceled but not the cages. Now, amazingly similar imprisonment structure is called "enriched colony system" instead of battery cages but it is actually trading one cruel metal cage system for a slightly less horrible metal cage system.

Enriched battery cages supposedly provide a little more cage space and nesting, perching and scratching facilities as enrichment. However the 600 square centimeters of usable area per bird, which the new cages need to supply, is barely larger than the space that hens have in battery cages and is still less than the size of an A4 page.
The chickens still cannot walk, stretch their wings or comfortably turn around. They still spend most of their time standing on a sloping wire mesh floor with no fresh air or sunshine. They are still debeaked and despite the "enrichment" they still lack the opportunity to display natural and necessary behaviors such as nesting, perching, foraging and Dust Bathing.

Enriched Colony System – Dustbathing

Dustbathing is an important physical and emotional behavior that enables the hens to recondition their feathers, maintain a comfortable body temperature and remove stale oils and parasites.
The teensy sand or wood shavings "Dustbathing" box in the "enriched" colony cages, don’t provide a sufficient depth or size area for the hens to toss, rub and shake the litter through their feathers and is likely to increase the pollution of the already polluted with toxic gases, floating feathers and pathogens, chickens’ environment. Increasing the load of airborne particles exacerbates the respiratory infections and eye irritation from which the hens already suffer.

Enriched Colony System – Perches

Hens are strongly motivated to seek a high perch on which to roost at night.
Perches provided in "enriched" cages are unable to fulfill this need since they are placed only 7-10 cm above the floor while they should be at least 16, especially in cages with such low ceiling. While these perches may provide some relief from the sloping wire floor at night, they are mere obstacles making the already difficult movement around the cage even worse.

Enriched Colony System - Nest Boxes

Chickens are highly motivated to find a dim, quiet and intimate place to lay their eggs. Colony cages contain only one 'nest box' which is actually just a small piece of rubber mat with a few rubber flaps hanging down from the cage roof, which dozens of birds are forced to compete for each day. In an attempt to escape the confinement, some hens remain in them even when not laying, thus preventing other hens from using the nest.

Enriched Colony System - Scratch Pads

In nature hens spend 50% of their day scratching and pecking.
However in the “enriched” colony cages there is only one scratch pad in each cage so the hens are forced to compete for access. Clearly the more dominant hens will prevent others from ever accessing it. Currently many hens ignore the tiny strange rubber mat placed in their cage and even if they didn’t, obviously the scratch pads only scratch the surface of the problem, dealing with the symptoms - overgrown claws, rather than the cause which is the inability of the chickens to scratch and peck or carry out meaningful exercise which leads to behavioral frustration, bone weakness and osteoporosis. Currently about 7% of the eggs are produced in Europe, and not all the European countries are EU members and so the directive doesn’t apply to them. So actually the change is relevant for a relatively small fraction of the world total egg production. And most of the eggs are produced in China where welfare reforms of any kind are not expected in the foreseeable future.

Forced Molting

Forced molting is a way to further exploit hens before they become "worthless" as egg-laying machines.
Forced molting entails depriving birds of food and water for up to 3 weeks as a way to stimulate laying in hens whose bodies are already depleted.

Molting literally refers to the replacement of old feathers by new ones. In nature, birds replace all their feathers in the course of a year to maintain good plumage at all times. A natural molt often happens at the onset of winter. The hen stops laying eggs and concentrates her energy on staying warm and growing new feathers. But the egg industry exploits this natural process by forcing an entire flock to molt simultaneously.

This is done to pump a few hundred more eggs out of exhausted hens because it is cheaper to "recycle" them rather than immediately slaughter them after a year of relentless egg-laying on a calcium-deficient diet.

Killing

By the time they are sent to slaughter, the hens are a mass of broken bones, oozing abscesses, bright red bruises, and internal hemorrhages, making them fit only for shredding into products that hide their true state, such as chicken soups, flesh pies and other processed foods.

At the end of the laying period, the hens are brutally taken out of the battery cages and into the transport cages by their wings, legs, head, feet, or anything that can be grabbed. The chicken "stuffers" are paid for speed, not gentleness.

Half-naked from feather loss and terrorized by a lifetime of abuse, hens in transit, embody a state of fear so severe that many are paralyzed by the time they reach the slaughterhouse.

Ironically, the first time battery-caged hens are able to flap their wings is when they struggle against rough handling as they are transported to the slaughterhouse. The first time they experience the outdoors is when they are sent to be slaughtered or thrown away to a dumpster.

Wake up! A world, that battery cages could have been invented in, is a world in which outlawing them won’t cure anything.
Battery cages are a symptom. One of the severest, but still a symptom.
Stop dealing with the symptoms and start dealing with the causes.