Pepper

One crisp night in May, 2014, we wandered into a free range farm. Half the sheds on the property were caged hens and the other half was what is termed “free range” These sheds were huge, with access to the outside being about the size of a small courtyard. We came across an open shed. The first thing we saw were dead chickens lying everywhere outside. When we walked into the shed with it’s doors left wide open, we found a dissembled free range egg shed. The floors had been taken down and all the chickens had been sent off to slaughter. In egg farms, hens only get to live up to 18 months old because it is deemed that their egg production slows down after that time. This is the same in cage farms, in barn laid farms and in free range farms.

Up to 60.000 chickens in this one shed had been picked up, thrown into a truck and driven off to get slaughtered, but there were some left behind. The girls who couldn’t be caught and the girls who hid from the workers now huddled against the shed walls, starving and thirsty with no protection from predators. They had been there for up to a week, waiting to be picked off by foxes and listlessly searching for food and water.  Half of the remaining emaciated hens in this shed had their feet encased in large clumps of manure and mud. This is a direct result of living in a free range shed. Free range shed floors are full of small semi circle enclosed holes which manure gets caught in. Hens step into these holes and their feet get trapped in manure balls forever.

When I first saw Pepper, she was cowering against the wall of the shed with a group of other hens. She got up to walk away from me, but I noticed that her feet were complete manure balls and she had incredible trouble walking. We noticed that she was friends with one particular, terrified, bald hen. My friend scooped up the bald hen and I grabbed Pepper. I put her under my jumper and all I could feel of her was bones. She was completely emaciated. Her feet, covered in manure, hung down below my jumper as we made the trek out. Both those girls came back to my home and both were two of the most terrified hens I have ever rehabilitated.

Pepper’s feet were so bad that it took me days and days of soaking and cutting to get it all off. Once I did remove it all, I realised one of her toes was broken, so she was given pain relief and antibiotics for a few weeks.

We named Pepper’s friend, “Bowie”, after 1970’s David Bowie because she was so thin and pale. Pepper and Bowie were very protective of each other and the best of friends. I would not and could not separate them.

Pepper was named after a character in Annie who has attitude and spunk, but these days Pepper is also known as “Hagrid” and “Bigfoot” because she is an enormous chicken! She is just huge and she often still walks around like she has the manure balls on her feet. Pepper is a great reminder that free range eggs are not humane and are not free of cruelty. This hen and her friends suffered from the heights of cruelty because of man’s insatiable appetite to eat eggs.

 

  Please don’t eat eggs. You don’t need them.

Please don’t use my images without permission. All images are Copyright Tamara Kenneally