Animal Rescue Exceeds Expectations

A massive rescue effort by local animal protection groups initially hoping to save 300 hens from an egg farm has freed 1,800 lucky birds. While that’s only a little more than one percent of the 160,000 white leghorn hens who populated the egg factory farm in Santa Clara County, California, it is still a substantial number. Moreover, this may be the first time in California that agribusiness has allowed groups to come onto a factory farm to save as many animals as they can carry while documenting the process.

Leading the weeklong liberation that began on August 13 was Animal Place, a farmed-animal sanctuary in Vacaville, about 45 miles northeast of San Francisco. Kim Sturla, Animal Place’s director, worked with other local organizations to coordinate the rescue and find homes for the hens. Sturla says those groups included the Center for Animal Protection and Education (CAPE) of Santa Cruz, East Bay Animal Advocates of Oakland, the Marin Humane Society, Viva!USA of Davis, United Animal Nations of Sacramento, and many others.

The land’s new owner had contacted Animal Place last spring when he discovered the property included tens of thousands of hens, all living in dimly lit sheds in filthy conditions. Sturla negotiated with the landowner and egg producer to remove as many birds as possible once they were “spent.” The egg industry deems a hen “spent” when her egg production has dropped and it’s no longer economically viable to continue feeding her, typically after two years. (Today’s hens are bred and raised to lay 260 eggs a year – many times more than what is natural for them.)

“This is really the first rescue of its kind,” said Sturla. “We had permission to go in and bring out as many hens as we possibly could. To accomplish this, we had some amazing cooperation among local sanctuaries and humane societies. And now we’re getting tremendous support from the public. Because of this rescue, many people are just learning about the horrors these birds suffer, and they are opening their hearts and homes to them.”

More than a dozen volunteers removed the Santa Clara County hens from battery cages, some of which held as many as eleven birds. All the hens had endured a standard industry practice called debeaking in which a hot blade is used to sear off the tips of their beaks in an effort to prevent them from harming one another amid the stressful, confined conditions. No painkiller is used during this procedure, which leaves the hen unable to eat or groom properly, and it is just one of the many miseries hens suffer in the egg industry. The steel-wire cages inside the factory farm’s immense shed were stacked in three tiers, so that excrement from the top rained down on those below. Not able to venture outdoors to enjoy the ground and sunshine and spending almost their entire lives packed into cages so tightly they could not spread a single wing, these hens were denied every natural instinct.

Not even death for egg-laying hens is humane. While federal laws and the California Humane Slaughter Act govern the methods to slaughter animals, these regulations do not apply to spent hens or small game birds. Thus, when spent hens go to slaughter, they are packed into a crate even more tightly confined than their battery cage. Assuming they survive the trip to the processing plant, each hen is then hung upside down and her head is dipped into an electrified tank of water intended to immobilize her. This method does not render every hen unconscious, however, and others simply hold their heads above the water. The birds continue to move along a conveyor belt system where, immobilized or not, their throats are cut. (Although it is not required in California, most processing plants make an attempt to stun the hens.)

Today, the 18-month-old hens lucky enough to be rescued are enjoying a variety of new surroundings. Many went to humane societies in Marin and San Mateo, and several hundred are adjusting to freedom at Animal Place. Sturla describes the hens, who previously spent every moment in confinement, as relishing the open space, fresh air, and sunshine. “They were tentative at first, not quite sure about things,” she said. “But now they are basking in the sun and enjoying their first dust baths. It’s joyful to all of us at the sanctuary to watch them just be hens!”

Anyone interested in adopting the hens can contact:

Animal Place, (707) 449-4814; http://www.animalplace.org
Marin Humane Society, (415) 506-6225; http://www.marinhumanesociety.org