The lives of chickens farmed for eggs

Written By Gig Harbor Animal Sanctuary

A rescued layer hen living at Farm Sanctuary. The photos in this post are provided by We Animals Media.

Today in the United States, we raise nearly 400 million chickens for their eggs, and the average American consumes 288 chicken eggs per year. That’s a lot of chickens and a lot of eggs! And yet, most of us don’t know much about chickens or how we farm their eggs.

Though many of us eat eggs every day, either by themselves or hidden in baked goods, we may know little about the lives of the chickens that lay them. This post aims to help by taking a closer look at the lives of chickens raised for their eggs on factory farms, where 98.2% of chickens in the United States come from.

Selective breeding

Modern chickens descended from wild junglefowl, which still exist in Asia today.

During the 1950s industrial revolution, we started selectively breeding chickens to either grow more flesh or produce more eggs as quickly as possible. We call the latter group “layer chickens” or “layer hens,” because we take the eggs that they lay.

Whereas wild junglefowl lay 10 to 20 eggs per year in one or two clutches, layer hens now lay more than 250 eggs per year, almost one per day.

Producing more than 10 times the number of eggs they were meant to lay strains their bodies. Each time a layer hen lays an egg, she loses protein, vitamins, calcium, and other essential minerals. Consequently, most layer hens suffer from osteoporosis, bone fractures, and reproductive issues such as a prolapsed uterus, ovarian cancer, or egg-binding, which occurs when an egg gets stuck inside their oviduct and often leads to death.

Breeding and incubation

We house parent or “breeder” layer chickens in slatted-floor cages with automatic watering, feeding, and egg-collecting systems. We allow them to mate naturally but don’t allow them to incubate their eggs. Instead, we move their eggs to a hatchery, where we store them with thousands of other eggs in a controlled environment. At 18 days, we put the eggs in hatching baskets, and at 21 days the chicks hatch. 

Sorting and debeaking

As soon as the chicks hatch, we sort them by gender. 

We sort hours-old chicks by gender.

If the chick is male, we consider him to be worthless since he can't lay eggs, and his body is too small and slow-growing to be profitable as meat. Therefore, we either grind him up alive or dispose of him in a trash bin, where he suffocates or is crushed under the weight of other male chicks. We kill billions of male chicks this way every year.

If the chick is male, we kill him.

If the chick is female, we keep her for her egg-laying potential. In her first week, we vaccinate and debeak her. Debeaking involves us using a hot blade or an infrared light to cut off the front of her beak so that she doesn’t peck herself or others (a stress-related behavior). Chickens’ beaks have lots of nerve fibers and sensory receptors, which makes this an intensely painful procedure for the chicks. We don’t give them any pain relief. Consequently, some chicks die from shock, and others die from starvation or dehydration as using their beak becomes too painful. We then sell the chicks to a layer farm.

Childhood

Once at the layer farm, we either put the layer hens in a battery cage or a cage-free system. 

If we put them in a battery cage, like 80 percent of layer hens in the US, they share a wire-and-mesh cage with about 5 other layer hens. We give each hen less floor space than a standard sheet of printer paper, and the cages are about 15 inches high, so their movement is limited. They can’t walk, stretch their wings, or escape from other hens who pick on them. Their cages are among thousands of other cages that are stacked wall to wall, floor to ceiling. In one shed, there may be 60,000 to 100,000 layer hens. Because we pack the hens together so tightly, it’s difficult to identify individual hens who are sick or injured, so we often leave them to die slowly in their cage.

Hens confined to battery cages

If we put the layer hens in a cage-free system instead, they live on the floor of a windowless shed that they share with thousands of other hens. While they can walk and spread their wings, we don’t clean the shed, so the floor is covered in feces, which gives the layer hens respiratory illnesses, intestinal disease, parasites, lung lesions, and ammonia burns. There might be a small outdoor space, but most of the hens can’t access it, since the size, quality, and availability of the outdoor space in a cage-free system aren’t regulated or enforced.

In their short lives, no matter if they’re in a battery cage or a cage-free system, layer hens don’t have a minute of peace. They get no natural light, no fresh air, no space to move or stretch, and no quiet. They can’t express their natural behaviors and interests like foraging, perching, taking dust baths, nesting, mating, or raising chicks. 

Hens in an organic “free range” farm.

The stress of the layer hens’ environment leads to unnatural, stress-related behaviors such as pulling out their own or other hens’ feathers or pecking the injured or dead hens around them. The overcrowding and filth may even cause them to die from colibacillosis, erysipelas, coccidiosis, red mite infestation, lymphoid leukosis, cannibalism, Newcastle Disease, pasteurellosis, or botulism.

Dead laying hens. Due to poor health or living conditions, millions of hens die before reaching “slaughter age.”

Hens can live up to 10 years, but their egg production starts to decline after a year. To keep profits high, we either force molt them, which involves starving them for 7 to 28 days to shock their body into producing more eggs, or we slaughter them and replace them with younger hens. 

Transport and slaughter

We often raise layer hens in a different location from where we slaughter them. To transport the hens to the slaughterhouse, we catch them by hand and pack them into small cages on a transport truck. In the process, we fracture the wings and legs of millions of the hens

The trucks are so crowded that the hens have no room to move. Their ride to the slaughterhouse may last for hours or days. During that time, we don’t give them food, water, or rest, and we expose them to extreme weather. Millions of hens die from hemorrhaging, heat stress, freezing, heart failure, or terror before reaching the slaughterhouse.

For the hens who are still alive when they reach the slaughterhouse, we hang them upside down by metal shackles, inadvertently breaking more of their legs in the process. The conveyor belt first carries them through an electric bath, intended to stun them. It then passes the hens through automatic blades that cut their throats. After they have bled out, we submerge them in a tank of scalding water to loosen their feathers. In an attempt to escape, many hens move and miss the electric bath, the automatic blades, or both, leaving them fully conscious when submerged in the scalding tank, where they then drown.

We shackle chickens to a processing line at a slaughterhouse.

How to help

Chickens, like us and our pets, are intelligent and sentient beings who experience a range of emotions such as joy, fear, stress, and pain. Consequently, the practices we subject them to cause them immense suffering.

Here’s the good news: As a consumer, you have the power to directly impact the welfare of farmed animals. All you need to do is stop purchasing products that are produced in a way that you disagree with, and suppliers will be forced to either stop or improve their practices. It’s that simple.

Instead, you can purchase animal products from suppliers who treat animals well. But in this case, you’ll need to do research and exercise caution, as farmers and labels often claim to be more humane than they actually are.

Or, you can abstain from consuming eggs altogether, as humans don't need to eat animal products to be healthy. Instead, opt for plant-based proteins such as lentils, beans, vegetables, and even fruits.

After all, chickens were never meant to lay so many eggs. Like every other bird, the only reason that chickens lay eggs is to raise the next generation. Continuing to consume eggs, even from backyard chickens, means that we will continue to objectify chickens and cause unnecessary suffering by breeding hens who suffer the effects of selective breeding and by discarding the unwanted roosters. Happily, today, it’s easier than ever to go egg-free. If this interests you, consider reading our post Easy egg alternatives.

Every day and every meal, we have the opportunity to live out our values. If animal welfare is one of your values, join us in choosing compassion every time you shop and every time you eat.

Gig Harbor Animal Sanctuary
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