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EXCLUSIVE:
MFA INVESTIGATION AND
OPEN RESCUE
AT OHIO'S LARGEST EGG
FACTORY FARMS |
The
Dead and Dying
 At Buckeye and Daylay Egg Farms the mortality rate is very high given the cruelly taxing and unsanitary conditions. According to a report by the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, for every 700,000 hens in a modern egg facility, 1,500 birds die each and every week in their cages. Many hens meet a cruel and prolonged death when their bodies become lodged underneath the feeding trays or trapped in the wire of their cages. With no escape, these hens must endure the constant trampling by their
cage mates. Many hens succumb to untreated sickness, disease, or injures.
 Numerous dead birds are overlooked by management, who has neither the time nor inclination to remove the corpses. At both Buckeye and Daylay, severely decomposed bodies were discovered in cages with live hens. The hens were left to slowly rot on their cage floors. Their cage mates, still producing eggs for human consumption, are forced to live with the stench and maggots this creates.
 Factory farms view hens as mere production units, with the sole purpose of pumping out as many eggs as possible. The factory “farmers” disregard the health and welfare of the individual animals, as they consider the number that will die in their profit calculations. They are treated as inanimate objects, commodities to be disposed of once they are no longer useful. At Daylay Egg Farm a live hen, weakened to the point of barely being able to lift her head, was found in a dumpster filled with trash and hundreds of dead birds. She was left in this extremely cruel state without food, water, or protection from the elements. MFA is pursuing legal action on behalf of this hen.
 Once a hen’s egg production declines, she is sent to the slaughterhouse or disposed of by other means. Chickens are exempt from the Humane Slaughter Act, and many hens have their necks cut while fully conscious. Some birds will enter the scalding tank alive. This is so common that the industry has a name for these birds - "redskins". Furthermore, for every egg-laying hen confined in a battery cage, there is a male chick who was killed at the hatchery. Because egg-laying breeds don't grow fast enough or large enough to be raised profitably for meat, the male chicks are of no economic value. They are disposed of at birth- usually by the least expensive and most convenient means available. They may be thrown into grinders, where they will
be ground up alive, or discarded into trashcans.
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"As to the live chicken in the dumpster, this is an extremely inhumane way to leave a living creature. The hen would eventually die from dehydration or starvation or from being crushed my additional birds being dumped on top of her. Often, birds dumped in this way have broken bones and other illnesses and injuries from which they are suffering, so by not being humanely euthanized, they are caused to a slow and agonizing death."
Laurie Siperstein-Cook, DVM and Avian Veterinarian |
Pits
of Despair
 In the manure pits, below the cages, mounds of feces stretch as far as the eye can see. At both Buckeye and Daylay, massive cobwebs engulf the walls and ceilings, and the manure crawls with maggots, beetles, and other insects. Flies swarm everywhere. Investigators found the stench nearly intolerable. The high emission of ammonia created contributes to the spread of disease and infection for the hens above. This toxic ammonia rises from the decomposing uric acid in the manure pits beneath the cages to produce a painful corneal ulcer condition in the chickens. This is known as "ammonia burn," a condition that often leads to blindness. It often facilitates chronic respiratory diseases such as infectious bronchitis, caused by airborne virus.
 At Buckeye and Daylay Egg Farms, countless hens that had managed to escape their cages were found wondering in the filthy, dark manure pits. Hens trapped in the manure storage areas did not have access to water or food, and are at risk of dying from dehydration. Many emaciated hens had insects crawling over their weakened bodies. Countless dead birds, many in late stages of decomposition, were found in the manure pits of both farms. Bodies infested with maggots and flies were a common finding as well. This again demonstrates that regular checks of the production units either were not done, or these hens were left in negligence. MFA investigators discovered a live hen, with her body half submerged in wet manure, in the pits of Daylay Egg Farm. She was left to die, immobilized in her own feces, without access to food or water, and with bugs crawling over her skin. Luckily, she was freed from the manure, and certain death, by an MFA investigator.
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"There were also live and dead hens in the manure pit. A hen in the manure pit has no access to food and water and if not rescued quickly will eventually die of starvation and thirst. Once again this is evidence of no bird inspection. Several of the hens are very weak and had obviously been in the pit for days. One was so weak that she was gradually being engulfed by the manure. I cannot think of a worse way to die than being deprived of food and water and sinking into fecal material."
Ian J.H. Duncan, Professor of Poultry Ethology at the University of Guelph |
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