Imagine you have lived in a cage all your life. You are cramped in that cage and have hardly any room to move or exercise. Your life is only 18 months long. Unless you are born male, then you would be killed at once because you are considered useless. This may seem unrealistic but really, thats how twenty six million egg-laying hens in New Zealand live their lives. In other words, eighty three percent of egg-laying chickens are battery hens.
Battery hens live in cramped spaces of only 550cm2 or in simpler terms, ¾ of the size of an A4 piece of paper. A battery hen has no room to move or stretch her wings. Some conditions that come from hens living in these cages are brittle or broken bones, loss of feathers and other injuries.
Peoples’ main argument for not caring is “What does a chicken know? Its a chicken!” But when battery hens are rescued and sold onto people who like keeping them in their gardens, they have no idea of what to do. They haven't learnt how to be chickens. The hens crowd into corners, which brings on a danger of crushing others. Hens don't know how to walk properly at first due to having no room to move in their cages. But website Animalsanctury.co.nz say that once they discover dust baths, flapping their wings and laying in the sun, its a sight that brings joy to your heart!
When chicks are hatched male, the industry has no use for them. Due to this, 3 million one day old chicks are killed each year either by gassing or maceration. Caged hens will only live eighteen months while free-range hens will live up to six years. Every year a a battery hen lays 300 eggs while a wild chicken will lay twelve-to-twenty. This shows that these battery hens are overworked and their health is in danger.
If a hen is free range she can thrive and enjoy the pleasures of dust-bathing or laying in the sun. But if she is in a colony cage or battery cage, she will never see the sun.
Most hens in battery or colony cages get their beaks cut of to avoid pecking and cannibalism. Though this seems like a good practice, it’s not. This process is extremely painful and takes away one of the complex sensory organs of a hen that has a supply of pain receptors, leading to chronic pains throughout their lives. Human amputees have reported similar pains.
In conclusion, keeping hens in battery cages or colonies is a practice that needs to be stopped. The people running the shed where the cages are kept are being cruel to the animals and it must stop. After all, if we are going to be using these animals for our own purposes, then the least we could do is show a bit more respect.
By Jordyn Bold.
you have every good vocabulary and its such a sad topic to talk about well done
ReplyDeleteThis was a very convincing piece of writing and after reading this I want to start buying free ranged eggs. It was really good so well done :)
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete