Are our hens happy?

By Carol Johnston, Volunteer, Stepney City Farm

So how well do you know where the eggs you buy from our local supermarket or shop are from?  Do any of us really give much thought to where they have been laid?

 

Visitors to Stepney City Farm’s Hen Hoe Down on Saturday 18th and Sunday 19th July 2015 were not only invited to join in a range of enjoyable creative activities including painting and decorating chicken masks, with paper plates,  paint, glitter, and coloured paper, making a health chicken feed mix from a variety of edible seeds and olive oil (to aid a chicken’s digestion), and sewing cress seeds inside recycled egg shells, but had the opportunity to learn the answers to questions and boost their knowledge of how chickens are looked after in the UK, EU and rest of the world.

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Chicken mask made at the Hen Hoe Down

Lifting flaps attached to two chicken wire cages on show at the Hen Hoe Down, invited visitors to the Hen Hoe Down to discover the answers to some very pertinent questions and facts and figures about chicken farming systems in different parts of the world and the conditions in which chickens are kept.  Both cages were filled with papiermâché chickens, made by children at the farm, to represent the overcrowding chickens experience in enriched battery and barren cage systems of chicken farming.  The terrible truth is that more than three billion chickens throughout the world are currently condemned to live in barren battery cage systems, with space allowance of only 550cm2 per chicken (less than an A4 sheet of paper).  In the EU 250 million currently exist in enriched battery cage systems, allowing 750cm2 per chicken – though Germany led the way in banning all cages for chickens in 2012. Unless specified, systems from outside the EU mean that the chickens are likely to be kept in barren battery cages.  While this battery cage system is illegal in the UK, it is unfortunately legal outside the EU.

 

In contrast the chickens at Stepney City Farm farm are free ranging around the farm during the day, in a habitat that simulates their natural environment, as much as possible, with trees and bushes and dug areas which they can use as dirt baths to make them clean and healthy.  Remember that chickens are descended from jungle fowl, or gallus gallus, a genus originating in India. The farm also provides perches in every coop, and nesting boxes to lay eggs.  Currently Stepney City Farm has about 70 female hens and 20 cockerels, including Buff Orpingtons, Peking Bantams, Arukanas, Appenzerspitzhaben, light Sussex and Boulinas. The chickens are kept in at night to protect them from predation from foxes.  Their diet is combination a healthy mix of greens, what they find from foraging, slugs and snails collected from the garden, corn given by visitors, and they are fed layers pellets overnight, with oyster grit mixed in with the adult chicken’s food to assist their digestion.

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Un-enriched or barren hen cage

The impact of different farming methods on chicken’s behaviour

Katharine Sharp, Site Manager, Stepney City Farm, says, “For the past four years we have re-housed ex-battery chickens on the farm. The first chickens we rehomed was in 2011, from barren battery cages before the ban was brought in in 2012.  These chickens looked terrible and took about two weeks before they would even go outside on their own without being encouraged to do so.”

She continued, “Now we rehome hens from different systems through the British Hen Welfare Trust, our latest editions being from commercial free-range and barn systems this July.  Although I don’t personally agree with the enriched cage system, the chickens took a noticeably quicker time to explore than their barren battery cage predecessors.”

Francine Pommereau, London Group Coordinator, Compassion in World Farming, who helped run a stall at the Hen Hoe Down on Saturday, says, “The lack of space and the way they discard chicks that are of no use and grind them alive are some of the worst aspects of chickens kept in battery systems.”

Furthermore, The Fuze, a volunteer from Compassion in World Farming, says, “Enriched cages don’t have much more space than a battery cage.  If you could imagine standing in a small room, with other people, with artificial lights on all day, and no windows, and you stay there until you are taken away and killed, this is all the life the chicken will ever have, and they will never go anywhere else. 

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Francine Pommerau, London Group Coordinator and the Fuse, Volunteer from Compassion in World Farming

As Francine says, “Factory farming will exist as long as we send the signal that people want them.  We won’t change anything unless we change our eating habits and the way we consume.”

The Chicken Labelling Challenge

Educational activities at the Hen Hoe Down also included a chicken labelling challenge, organised by Simon White, Volunteer Manager at Stepney City Farm, which tested the visitors’ understanding of how chickens are kept by asking them to match contemporary labelling standards to a selection of photos of chickens being kept in diverse conditions and environments.

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Simon White, Volunteer Manager, Stepney City Farm posing a hen labelling challenge to visitors

The Assured Food Standards applies minimum standards similar to minimum legal standards in the UK for keeping chickens, where chickens can be kept indoors all day, in battery cages and subjected to artificial light.  The RSPCA/Freedom Food standards apply standards slightly above the minimum standards, which can be applied to almost all chicken farming systems including barn and free range systems, with the proviso that the chickens must have access to a natural light source and minimum space allowances of 19 chickens per square metre.  The Soil Association/Organic labelling system advocates that chickens should be allowed permanent daily access to an outdoor environment, with trees and diverse ecological environments, and a greater space allocation than all other systems.

As, Simon says, “It is so important that people get more information about where their food comes from and the welfare implications of that.  People are very familiar with certification labels but don’t know what they mean. Today is very much about educating the public about different farming systems that we have and the welfare implications of them so they can make informed decisions.”

So the next time you go to buy your eggs spare a thought to the conditions in which the chickens are being kept and if you are not sure about the labelling system do your homework and find out where they come from.  Then you too can make an informed choice and be assured that your eggs are sourced ethically and as far as possible in line with Compassion in World Farming and Soil Association guidelines.