Storm

It was pouring on the drive to the abattoir. It was pouring when I walked in to the abattoir. It was pelting down as I took my camera out from under my jacket to start taking photos. The storm that night was just starting.
I walked past her in the crate a few times. I saw her, but I continued to take photos around the corner at girls in other crates. She stuck in my mind, so I went back and took some photos of her.

She had travelled many hours crammed in to a crate with roughly 30 other hens with no food or water, on a truck that was carrying thousands of egg laying hens. They were freezing. It was their first time out of the cage egg farm that is kept at the same temperature all year around. She was only 18 months old, but had been sent to her death because she no was no longer producing enough eggs to be deemed “profitable”.

I walked away from her again. Then five minutes later, I walked back. I took this photo and then we got her out of there.
Her name is Storm, because she was rescued on a stormy night. A night where I got soaked to the bone and her life started again.

When I chose to take Storm from the crate full of hens ex-commercial laying hens at the abattoir, it didn’t make me feel good, no, it made me feel despair – like it always does. When my friend pulled the crate draw out to rescue Storm, all the other girl’s heads popped up, in a uniformed cry for help. If I could take them all, I would. The feeling of walking away from thousands of sweet little souls who only want to live and leaving them to be slaughtered the next day scars my heart in a way I can’t explain to you.
We can’t rescue them all. There is just no possible way. They get slaughtered in their billions, all over the world. every single day. I can’t take them all, I struggle for funds caring for the ones I have.

The only way we can stop this is by stopping eating eggs and products with eggs in them. It’s the only way.

Storm now lives in Super Chicken’s flock and has realised she has a huge love of oats, dust baths and handsome roosters.
Not all chickens are this lucky. Most chickens suffer in disgusting farms without room to move, being bullied, without any medical attention. They are then sent to their deaths whilst completely terrified. No one sees them. No one is supposed to see them.
Choose to be kind.