In the egg industry, millions of hens spend a year or longer confined in cramped wire battery cages, barely able to move. Most egg farms considered to be free-range or cage-free are overcrowded and provide birds with very limited or no access to the outdoors. 

Hens exploited for egg production have been selectively bred to lay an unnaturally high number of eggs, which maximizes profit but at the expense of animal welfare.

In nature, hens would lay around 10-15 eggs per year, but the average U.S. commercially raised hen will lay around 285 eggs each year. This excessive production takes a devastating toll on the birds’ bodies, often leading to osteoporosis and even fractured bones. Sanctuaries who rescue hens from the egg industry do the best they can to mitigate the suffering caused by these genetic predispositions. Besides being frail and deficient in nutrients like calcium, hens rescued from the egg industry have been pushed to their biological limits. They are at risk of eggs getting impacted in their oviduct, which can lead to death, or prolapse, wherein their oviduct protrudes outside of their body, sometimes requiring surgery. In an effort to lessen the birds’ discomfort, hens at Farm Sanctuary are given implants to suppress excessive egg-laying.

Some sanctuaries feed eggs back to the hens, which is believed to offer them important nutrients. We used to do this, but recent information suggests that eggs are not healthy for the hens, so we no longer feed eggs to hens at Farm Sanctuary.

Some sanctuaries give eggs to staff, volunteers, or visitors. Although eggs laid by hens at a sanctuary are not products of exploitation, at Farm Sanctuary, we do not want to normalize the consumption of eggs by humans, so we give them to people who can use them for wildlife or other rescued animals, or they are composted and the nutrients returned to the soil.

Follow us on social media and visit us in person to see more of our chicken friends and learn about their daily lives.