The Sun Against Her Wings

Transcript

American Egg Board commercial jingle: They're as fresh as the breeze.

James Hampton: Eggs come to you fresh every day. Serve 'em anyway you please. Eggs are natural and economical, so keep enough on hand.

American Egg Board commercial jingle: Nature made them nice and neat. All you do is heat and eat. Eggs, don't run out. The incredible edible egg.

Matt Lieurance, Co-Founder of Farm Animal Refuge: Although the egg industry is seen as more compassionate than the meat industry, it actually couldn't be further from the truth. Hens are exploited for their eggs for the first two, two and a half years of their life until they're deemed unprofitable for the farmers and they're sent to the exact same slaughterhouse that the meat chickens are. So although it does seem more compassionate to have eggs instead of meat, they all end up in the same place. They just had two years of neglect, abuse, and exploitation before they're sent to slaughter.

People definitely have some misconceptions about chickens. They generally see them as an animal that's not smart and does not have a personality, which couldn't be further from the truth. Chickens, like all animals, have their own personalities and their own way of living. All of them have the funniest little quirks and a really crazy intelligence that you would never think of because of the lies that the meat and the egg industry have kind of portrayed about these animals. And Lolly is no different than any of the other ones. She is funny. She loves to kind of peck around your feet and your hand when she thinks you have food. She loves Sunny, the rooster that's in here, and she's always spending time with him. And she's the first one to run for breakfast. She never misses a meal, and she's always the first one to come out and start pecking away at that chicken scratch.

Chickens or birds in the natural environment can produce either one egg a week or one egg a month, depending on their species. But what humans have genetically done to chickens to overproduce them is something that's completely unnatural and really detrimental to their health and their bodies. Chickens from the egg industry actually produce one egg a day. The toll it takes on their body is incredibly extreme.

So most of the hens that are kept alive longer and not slaughtered will actually pass away from reproductive issues, specifically due to the overproduction of eggs that humans have genetically modified them to produce.

So Lolly was born at the hatchery. Generally, they are born in large groups inside plastic bins. Those bins are dumped on conveyor belts. They are sorted. All of the males are actually generally thrown into a macerator, which is basically a giant grinder, still alive, because they'll never produce eggs. And that is standard industry practice and completely legal.

Before Lolly was put into the cage to produce eggs, she was put through a mutilation process called debeaking and cutting her toes off. They expect a few of them to pass away in the cages, and generally, their bodies are just left there to rot. So they go through procedures like debeaking and cutting off their toes to prevent them from scratching and pecking at the carcasses and spreading diseases to the other birds.

So all of the egg-laying birds are kept in what are called battery cages. Lolly was sorted into a cage, probably had about four to six other hens inside of that cage. Each chicken has about an eight by 11 piece of paper size to live their entire lives in. They're unable to spread their wings, properly stretch, or even see the sunlight for the entire time that they're there. All of the crates are made of wire. Their feet are just stuck on these wire mesh floors for the entire time that they are there, which is obviously very uncomfortable for them. They develop foot problems, nail problems, and they develop skeletal problems by being kept in such an unnatural environment.

All animals have ebbs and flows of their reproductive cycles. One way to force these to be shorter is actually restricting light and restricting sound and restricting certain elements of nutrients to force these chickens to go through a molt even faster than they would in the natural environment so they can produce eggs even quicker, and they don't have that break like a natural bird would.

It's cheaper for farmers to actually just get rid of animals if they're sick instead of treating them specifically for anything, and any kind of vet care is actually a complete minimum. So when you hear a lot about antibiotics being used in the industry, it's actually because they give it to all of the birds instead of the ones that are specifically sick, because they find it easier just to treat them all instead of finding the ones that are sick and treating them specifically.

There is a lot of different injuries and deaths that occur because there's no humans around to help protect these birds. They get their heads caught in the cages. They suffocate under the weight of their sisters in the other cages, and they break legs and they break wings and they break limbs all the time because of the wire cages that they're kept in. Because egg-laying hens are deprived of a lot of nutrients and they've been genetically modified not to produce a lot of meat, they're not technically profitable for the farmers. They are considered more of a waste product, and most of the bodies that end up being slaughtered from the egg industry end up going to pet food or cheap meat, like fast food.

After being placed in the cage to produce eggs for the first 2 1/2 years of her life, Lolly was never taken out, never saw sunlight. Luckily for her, she was released to an activist group, so she was able to be released with 24 of her sisters. Five of 'em still live here on the property.

Unfortunately, we've lost the rest to reproductive issues, as well as cancers and things like that. Bringing Lolly to Farm Animal Refuge was such a powerful experience. It was the first time that she ever experienced dirt, the first time she ever experienced the breeze through her feathers. She did take a little bit of time to kinda come out of her shell and to really become comfortable because she didn't know what was next. She spent her entire life watching the chickens around her disappear and never come back, and she didn't know if that was gonna happen to her or to any of the other chickens that she came with. After a few weeks, she realized she was safe, she was home, and she was loved, and she really started coming out of her shell and showing us the curious, fun, loving chicken that she really is.

So Lolly's day starts at sunrise, much like all the other animals here. They get a full breakfast and as well as some fresh produce throughout the day. And they get to spend the day doing whatever they want. They have their entire coop to peck around in and hunt for little grubs and worms and to feel the breeze and the sun, and they just spend the days doing what chickens want to do, including bathing in the dirt and drinking fresh water and just living life to the fullest like they should.

Because of her specific breeding, Lolly has a lot of genetic effects, including different reproductive issues that she will live the rest of her life with. The average lifespan of a chicken could range from 10 to 15 years, depending on the breed, and that's no different for Lolly. If she wasn't able to come here and live out her natural life, she would've been slaughtered at only two years old, which is basically a baby. Although these products we buy in the store don't have a face or a name linked to them directly, you can always think about Lolly when you see these products. When you see these eggs, when you see these chicken products in the store, know that they came from an individual, they came from a mother, and they came from a sentient being that wanted life.* Wanting to live, and did not want to be where they were at.

• A note from The Humane League: Although "chicken products" do come from mothers—in the sense that all birds have mothers—egg-laying hens at industrial facilities aren't technically mothers, since the eggs—which aren't fertilized—don't develop into chicks, and chicken meat products that are sold for human consumption generally don't come from chickens that have been used for breeding.