Judy Loveday

Judy Loveday was rescued in 2013 from a battery egg farm. She was found in the manure pit which is below the thousands of cages above it. This pit runs the entire length of the shed and can become metres deep in chicken manure. Chickens somehow get down into these pits from the cages above. They are either thrown down by workers or they escape and get down there during depopulation (when hens are sent to slaughter at 18 months old).

This was taken standing in the manure pit and looking up.

The hens who live down here can’t survive for long because there’s no food and the water they drink is from puddles on the manure piles. Hens get stuck in the manure and die there. They can’t get out. It’s a long, agonising death for a hen stuck in the manure. The hens who live down in the manure pits make nests out of the manure to lay their eggs in, it’s incredibly sad.

Judy Loveday was found cowering up against the corner near the shed door with one a few of her friends. She was covered in manure, sick, emaciated and completely terrified. She was rescued that night, but there were many we could catch and had to leave behind.

Judy now loves life. She enjoys foraging and dust bathing just that little bit more than everyone else, her need to be clean comes from a past living in and on mounds of poo.

All egg farms have these pits and all egg farms have chickens trapped in them. This is an horror added to the lives of commercial hens that not many people know about.

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