Mira and Jessie

In January 2015 we welcomed two lovely ladies recently rescued from a free range egg farm. Jessie and Mira are now settling in at the sanctuary and enjoying having room to move and interesting things to investigate.

Life in a free range farm, or barn, is one of continual battle for supremacy. The structure of hen societies requires that everybody knows their place, from the hen on top to the hen on the bottom.

When thousands of these birds are kept together in one place, the fighting never ever ends. There are simply too many birds for a hierarchy to emerge. Thus life consists of pecking others, being pecked, having your feathers torn out, and bloody sores that are constantly exposed to the bacteria-filled sheds that they are forced to call home.

Hens are routinely discarded by the egg industry when they are 18 months old. They have been genetically bred to lay 7 times more eggs than they would in nature, and the industry has learnt that at 18 months these poor creatures will begin to develop tumours and their reproduce systems will fail as a result of the huge burden that constant laying places on their fragile little bodies.

While Jessie and Mira's feathers will grow back in time, they will be forever scarred by the war zone that has been their life, and trapped in bodies that force them into a reproductive cycle every day. Jessie and Mira join Gemima as escapees from the horrors that free-range chickens endure despite all the marketing about free-range being a kinder alternative.

Please consider dropping eggs from your diet, so that fewer birds have to endure the bacteria-filled barns and reproductive burdens that these guys have suffered from for so long. Please also help us with our rescue and education programs by making a donation. And don't forgot to drop by and meet the girls!