Why Egg Free
Compare Kyndal and Harvee’s life of love and care with the typical life of a chicken born into the food production system.
Kyndal and Harvee
Pasado’s Safe Haven rescued Kyndal and Harvee, along with 50 other hens, from a large-scale egg laying facility. At just four years of age, their egg production had begun to slow, so the industry deemed them “spent” and was planning to kill them (a common method for killing chickens en masse is suffocation). Below we compare the lives of chickens like Kyndal and Harvee who live on a sanctuary to the typical life of a chicken born into the food production system.
The natural life of a chicken versus life on a factory farm
Chickens who are born into safety are able to hatch with their mother close by. Mother hens are naturally caring and are known to talk to their chicks while they are still in their eggs.
When chicks hatch on a factory farm, they are immediately brought into a world of fear. Generally, within a day of being born, chicks are sorted by sex. The males are killed en masse (usually ground up alive or suffocated to death) and the females begin their difficult lives producing far more eggs than is natural.
Harvee and Kyndal were rescued from an egg farm where they were trapped in tiny wire cages. Their first days at the sanctuary, we cleaned them and fed them and let them begin their journey of healing and learning what it means to be a chicken.
To keep from pecking each other to death in cramped conditions, it is common practice to cut off part of the chickens’ sensitive beaks without painkillers. As a result, many have difficulty eating and starve to death.
These birds now enjoy a rich life. They spend their days doing what chickens do naturally – foraging for bugs and seeds in the dirt, roosting in cozy nests, and being outside in fresh air and sunshine. Hens are naturally curious and social animals who form friendships and lifetime bonds with one another.
Chickens used for eggs are often kept in small wire cages, called battery cages, with no room to move and no access to fresh air. Most will never spread their wings or feel the sun on their feathers. Sadly, this is how they are forced to live out their entire lives.
Chickens are intelligent, social creatures who enjoy a range of activities from exploring and pecking the earth for bugs, to roosting in trees and sunbathing. They groom themselves with daily dust baths to stay clean. Kyndal and Harvee are finally able to do all of these things at the sanctuary.
Because chickens used for eggs are crammed so closely together, these normally clean animals are forced to urinate and defecate on one another. Chickens who have succumbed to disease are left to be trampled by others as they struggle for space.
Safe at Pasado’s Safe Haven, Harvee and Kyndal live in a place where they will always be loved and respected.
Once their egg production declines and their little bodies begin to give out, hens are killed en masse. Photo Credit: Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals
YOU CAN HELP STOP THIS SUFFERING EVERY DAY
By choosing plant-based foods you are reducing animal cruelty.