Not a Nugget

We are honored to be featured in Not a Nugget, a short film made in summer 2022 by our friend Mark Middleton. It is about a chicken named Iann who he took care of for a while in 20...

The faces of the egg industry

Meet Fennel, Sweetie, and Curry, three of our hens who have been rescued respectively from a caged, cage-free, and a pasture egg farm.Fennel was a very loving hen. She adored being...

Where does the chicken come from?

Yes, chickens descend from the jungle fowl who themselves descend from the Tyrannosaurus rex (see "Her great-great-...-great-grandma was a T-rex"). But closer in their family tree,...

how many eggs does a hen lay?

A commercial layer hen lays about 300 eggs a year, and there is nothing natural in this. We have been breeding them for maximum egg production, and we still are. In the US, the pro...

Egg labels

There are so many labels on an egg carton nowadays that it’s easy to be both overwhelmed and confused. What do all these labels mean? And what do they not?Let’s start with the labe...

forced molting

Forced molting (aka induced molting) is a practice in the egg industry to boost the laying cycle. At the end of their first laying cycle, the hens are starved for 7-14 days to arti...

California Prop 12

Last month we talked about the many different chicken breeds. Let’s have a closer look at the lives of the 7.7 billion egg laying hens living in the world today. 90% of them live i...

hatcheries

99% of all eggs and chicks come from hatcheries, and they are no better than puppy mills. The parents and grandparents are bred and the less desirable offspring are killed in orde...

A second life for ex-commercial hens

We welcomed Luna and Maya to our micro-sanctuary on New Year’s Eve. They are two adorable 2-year-old White Leghorns coming from an egg factory. The first time we adopted hens rescu...