Hen protects her chicks from a fierce animal

In 2020, 700 hens on a free range farm faced slaughter. We took them in, finding most placement in forever homes. The ones with health problems remained here. Pecky Girl is one of those hens. In a few weeks, she turns 6! That's nearly triple the lifespan of a hen on a commercial egg farm and double her lifespan on a pasture based farm! On large scale commercial farms, hens are slaughtered at 18-24 months old. On pasture based farms, hens might be 3 when slaughter or "depopulation" occurs. All of

This is how rescue hen Zailey tells us she's ready to lay an egg. Chickens are so smart! | The Gentle Barn

Look at her body 😔 "Egg laying hens" suffer such horrific lives. 🐔💔 "Battery hens" spend their entire lives crammed in these cages like you see in this video. Never feeling comfort, wire mesh and faces beneath their feet. Distressed birds furiously peck at each other, sometimes resorting to cannibalism. It's an unimaginably bleak environment. 😖 Naturally, hens would only lay 10-15 eggs a year, not 300 plus. We forced this on them too, through selective breeding. This is extremely taxing on t

Hen lays her first egg 🐓