Chickens - Enriched cages? No better than battery cages....

You may or may not know that since the start of the year battery cages were banned throughout Europe. A good thing you would think? Well yes - anyone who had ever visited a battery farm and seen the conditions that hens were kept in should be happy that this is no longer allowed. But what now? Well, hens are now kept in 'enriched cages' - ever so slightly bigger but more birds in each cage. Are the conditions really better? Well, you decide - in the picture are two who were rescued from these enriched cages in December. One is blind in one eye, the other has a lump of some sort on her head....
You can see they are unhealthily pale and have virtually no feathers. Hardly surprising when they are still treated in almost exactly the same way as they would have been if they were in battery cages - only the space they have has changed, nothing else....
These two are lucky, along with many others saved by the BHWT - a charity dedicated to giving chickens a second life in homes where they are cared for and they can live out their lives in a natural way. Those not lucky are slaughtered as soon as they are no longer profitable - this is usually when they are about 18 months old. A normal chicken usually lives until it is around 8 years. Chickens rescued from intensive farming such as this are lucky if they make it past half what their natural lifespan should be.
So is this method of farming chickens really worth a few pence off a dozen eggs? I certainly don't think so. But I am lucky enough to have 15 happy well cared for chickens. Do I care if they lay eggs? No, not really. Do I enjoy the eggs which they do lay? I certainly do. Do they taste better than any eggs you'll ever buy in the shops? Without a doubt.
And what of the two in the photo above? Well, they are now happy and healthy and enjoying their retirement. Their new life has seen them become more confident, exhibit natural and normal behaviour and grow back their feathers.

So - next time you buy eggs, do you really want to support the cruelty that these chickens have to endure??