Though many people think of eggs as cruelty-free, laying hens like Bobby Bob Bob endure severe physical and psychological trauma on factory farms. Bobby Bob Bob was rescued, but billions of unique birds like her are exploited and killed every year.
One thing you should know about chickens is that they dream.
As with humans, and dogs, and other birds, their rapid eye movement (REM) indicates a subconscious that's firing images as they sleep. Which raises the question: What do chickens dream about? Arms scooping them up on a crisp spring day? Acres of green overflowing with feed? A nice warm laptop to stand on?
Another thing you should know about chickens is that they sleep with one eye open, to protect themselves from predators. To shield themselves from harm.
Meet Bobby Bob Bob
The chicken named Bobby Bob Bob knows this second fact better than most. She has an extraordinary name because she's an extraordinary bird—a resilient brown hen with a disapproving face and over 2,500 Instagram followers. But it wasn't always this way. She wasn't always a social media star. She was always Bobby Bob Bob, but she didn't always have a name.
She always had dreams, but her life used to be a nightmare.
Like billions of other hens, Bobby Bob Bob was born on a factory farm: an industrial facility designed to churn out eggs at the expense of animal welfare, worker safety, human health, and any semblance of ethical consideration.
If she'd been born a male, she would have been deemed useless and killed right away—minced into oblivion with the thousands of other chicks who lost their genetic coin-flip. Worldwide, 7 billion male chicks are killed this way every year.
Take ActionBut Bobby Bob Bob is born a girl, so she is spared an instant death and instead given a slow one.
That is her reward.
Her first days.
Within a week of Bobby Bob Bob being born, the bottom half of her beak is sliced off with a hot blade. They've "fixed" her beak so she can't peck at the other hens in her cage. They do this to all of the hens in the hatchery.
The pain is excruciating, but they don't give her any painkillers, because to them she isn't an animal. She isn't an individual. She certainly isn't Bobby Bob Bob. She's just another egg-laying machine in need of repair.
When she's around 4 months old, Bobby Bob Bob is transferred from the hatchery to the laying facility: three giant, windowless, imposing sheds, some packed with as many as 80,000 birds.
The hens are stuffed into battery cages—tiny wire mesh cages, with wire floors that catch and twist the hens' feet. Five-to-ten hens live in each cage, with three rows of cages stacked on top of each other.
Take ActionBobby Bob Bob suffers nerve damage in her eye, either from all the toxins or from the physical trauma of an attack.
The hens can't spread their wings without hitting each other or the cage. They can barely turn around. They feel claustrophobic, depressed, rattled, stressed. Some are driven mad. The other hens bully and peck at Bobby Bob Bob. At one point, retreating from her attackers, she gets her head stuck between the wires of the cage.
When her head is ruthlessly shoved back inside the cage, her vertebrae are crushed, leaving her neck forever twisted.
To keep the hens laying at all times, the sheds are always awash in a dim artificial light.
Bobby Bob Bob's food is pumped full of antibiotics and supplements. She's been selectively bred, genetically engineered, physically tricked, and environmentally coerced for one purpose: to lay eggs. As many as possible, as fast as possible, no matter how it breaks her.
In one year, she will lay over 300 eggs—three times the number of eggs a hen would lay in 1920. The red jungle fowl from which she descends lays only 10-15 eggs per year. That's because laying eggs is exhausting, requiring more calcium than their body can often produce, leaving their bones weak and easily broken. It takes 22-26 hours to produce a single egg. Every day, the cycle begins anew. Bobby Bob Bob lays and lays, day after day after day. She can't keep this up forever. Most egg-laying hens stop producing eggs by the time they're 2 years old. (Chickens who aren't killed can live ten years.) Egg producers say they're "spent": used-up and useless. They send spent hens to slaughter.
It's the only time egg-laying hens ever see the sun.
Bobby Bob Bob does not hit the dreaded 2-year mark at the farm. One spring day, after 11 laying months and 300 lain eggs, Bobby Bob Bob sees a woman with a camera enter the shed.
The woman is horrified by what she sees, nauseated by what she smells, but not surprised by any of it. This isn't the first time she's been inside this shed, and it won't be the last. Her name is Tamara Kenneally, and she's here to rescue some hens. She can't rescue thousands of them, or even hundreds of them, which leaves her with an impossible choice: Who to save?
As Tamara walks along the rows of tiny cages, a bird catches her eye. Her neck is wrenched in a way that makes Tamara wince. She has gashes and scars from being pecked by the other five hens in her cage. There's a screw in her gizzard and half of her beak is missing. Her mouth is mangled. She wheezes when she breathes. Tamara rescues this hen not because she's extraordinary (she doesn't know that yet), but because she's pitiful.
She looks like she won't last one more day in this industrial, reproductive hell. Wire and feathers and blood and eggs. It's a death sentence. It's even worse than that.
Tamara cradles the hen in her arms and whisks her away.
The hen stays with a foster for a few weeks before going to live at Tamara's chicken sanctuary, Lefty's Place. Tamara names her Bobby Bob Bob after a character (Bob Fossil) on the absurd comedy "The Mighty Boosh" (Tamara's favorite show). Bobby Bob Bob becomes Tamara's shadow. She follows her everywhere, skipping happily across the yard in spite of her twisted neck, her infected lungs, her damaged eyes. Tamara gives her medicine for the pain, and acupuncture for her neck, not just after her rescue, but forever. Bobby Bob Bob will never fully heal—not physically—but she will thrive.
Bobby Bob Bob lived at Lefty's Place for seven years. Arms scooping her up on a crisp spring day. Acres of green overflowing with feed. A nice warm laptop to stand on. Those same arms that rescued her, cradled her as she left this earth on June 1, 2021. Tamara knew her end was coming as a tumour overtook sweet Bobby Bob Bob. But that didn’t make saying goodbye any easier. In Tamara’s words, “With great love comes great grief.”
For seven years Bobby Bob Bob's dreams came true.
Most hens' dreams never do. Three billion egg-laying hens are wasting away in battery cages all over the world. Very few, if any, will be rescued. They'll lay over 300 eggs a year for a year or two, until they're "spent," and then they will be killed.
But you can help them, and others like them. In Bobby Bob Bob's honor, start by leaving eggs off your plate, standing up for hens, and repairing the broken food system that held her captive for the first 15 months of her life.
Credits
Thank you to Tamara Kenneally for sharing her pictures and story with us.
Bobby Bob Bob's life lives on, in each of us