What are Battery Hens?

Why are you ranting about animal rights and all that? If we don't mass produce eggs, meat, etc., how do you expect the consumers' demand to be met? We're a population of 7 billion. Think about it. You'll say about how it's wrong to treat animals that way, but everything has a price. We have bigger problems to take care of.

Just so you know, free range systems have a far higher mortality, disease and cannibalism rate than any other system of poultry farming. It's not all sunshine and roses.

@anon11019: Fresh eggs have about half the cholesterol of store eggs, and up to seven times the amount of other nutrients! When an egg gets wet, it begins to decompose and has to be refrigerated. It weakens the shell, and allows air to leak inside the egg. Store eggs have been washed, and for this reason, they spoil quickly. Fresh eggs can be kept on your counter top for six months! A real yolk is bright orange - a store egg is anemic and yellow.

Here, people sell farm eggs for $3 a dozen, which is comparable to in stores. Even "cage free" usually means an overcrowded warehouse. Keeping a few chickens in your backyard isn't expensive or time consuming.

I've been buying free range eggs from local farms. When I go there to buy, I can see the chickens running around, fat and happy. At this one farm I went to, I noticed the ends of the beaks of some of the hens were cut off. I asked if they did that or if they are rescued. The one guy said he wasn't sure, but how they ended up with all the chickens was every once in a while a truck would drive by and toss some chickens into their yard.

I've had free range eggs, and I did not like them as much as normal eggs. It must be the adrenaline from the frightened battery hens that makes the eggs taste so much better.

I am part of the Bloubosrand Animal Welfare Group, a volunteer organization helping destitute animals and guiding their owners. We work in Cosmo City, South Africa.

We see lots of stinking cages packed with 'end of lay' chickens who look terribly abused (red skin and no feathers). They are further abused by buyers and sellers. This totally contravenes our Animals Protection Act. I am complaining non-stop left, right and center including to the government. Nobody is interested.

This is totally scandalous! Children as young as 12 years old, sent by their parents, are buying the chickens, and when I ask what is going to happen to the chicken, I am told: I am going to kill it. No wonder our society becomes more brutal by the minute. Why, for crying out loud, does out government not stop these atrocities? Klarika - Johannesburg - South Africa

It's absolutely disgusting how man treats animals. Did these folks who treat these hens this way have no mothers themselves? Are they brainless robots? I hope they all rot in hell, sooner than later.

This makes me feel physically sick. I recently visited an animals enclosure in a local park which had recently rescued some hens. The state they were in was horrible, it made me cry! Their whole necks were raw as were their underneath and they had barely any feathers. One of them had obviously had her feathers cut off. It's so sad to think that free range eggs don't even cost a lot more than eggs from caged hens yet people still buy them. To me, if you can't afford free range then do without, eggs are not important enough to have chickens tortured.

I had no idea that hens were tortured so much to mass produce eggs for us. I usually buy free range, vegetarian fed chicken eggs now (when the store has them) because I feel they're healthier. Because of my elevated cholesterol, I don't use many eggs but from now on, I will only buy free range or do without and will encourage others to do the same. I realize that this will be more expensive and I don't have a great budget, but some things cannot be ignored. B