Charity helps thousands of caged hens find new homes

Julie O'Shea would love the animal charity she founded to become obsolete.

She started Who Gives a Cluck in 2017 and has saved nearly 13,000 laying hens from being culled.

This year Ms O'Shea and her team of volunteers will rescue about 1,700 hens from a commercial caged egg farm.

Ms O'Shea previously had a corporate career but knew from a young age she would one day work with animals.

"I didn't realise all commercial hens were culled at just 18 months of age," she said.

Nine years ago she first rehomed a few hens from a local farmer who was about to cull his flock of 400.

She put a notice on her Facebook page and within 48 hours, all 400 hens were adopted.

Landline joined Ms O'Shea and her dedicated volunteers for an "adoption weekend" at Mullumbimby in northern New South Wales.

The group leaves before dawn on a Friday to collect hens from an undisclosed caged egg farm on the Queensland side of the border.

Ms O'Shea has had an agreement with the farmer for about seven years and pays him $2 for every hen.

A purpose-built trailer brings 247 chickens back to a shed in Mullumbimby. The hens have already been paired up with adoptees before they are picked up from the farmer.

"OK, girls, we're coming out," Ms O'Shea shouts as she helps unload the hens.

"[They're] walking on flat ground for the first time in their life," she said, referring to the wire cages the hens have been standing on back at the farm.

Every hen undergoes a health check. These include inspecting the wings, feet, eyes and throat, and looking for any common diseases.

Eleven hens do not pass the checks but it isn’t the end of the road for them. They will go to the charity's hen hospital in Brisbane or remain in a local sanctuary to be cared for by volunteers.

The Mullumbimby hen "village" houses about 100 chickens and includes a "dance floor", disco ball, and the only rooster in the village, a gentle giant known as Jack Black.

There are wards for sick birds and the "Golden Girl" wing for geriatric chickens aged over four and a half years.

These village hens will live out the rest of their lives here.

"We won't be adopting them because they've made friends," Ms O'Shea said.

The charity is run by volunteers and relies on donations and adoption fees for each rescue hen.

Who Gives a Cluck holds eight adoption Saturdays each year from the Sunshine Coast to Grafton.

The Mullumbimby event is met with excitement, especially from first-time adopters, affectionately known as "Mother Cluckers".

Denise Doyle and her nine-year-old son Joe are looking forward to adding "ex-factory farmed chickens" to their flock.

Joe predicts his new pets will be "a bit shaky for the first few days".

"Because they don't know what it's like to be actually loved," he said.

Cindy Alice has adopted hens from Who Gives a Cluck for the past five years.

"I love and nurture them as best I can and give them an amazing second part of their life … their first part was pretty traumatic," she said.

Free-range and barn-laid eggs generally dominate supermarket shelves, but caged eggs are still widely consumed.

"They make up [an estimated] 40 per cent of all the eggs that Australians eat every year, but they don't know it," Ms O'Shea said.

"It's because if you read the ingredients on anything that has egg in it — cakes, breads, pastas, anything — if it's got egg in it, it'll be a battery hen's egg."

Caged egg farming was set to be banned nationally by 2036, but the Victorian government recently announced a one-year delay until 2037, due to the H5N1 bird flu outbreak.

RSPCA chief science officer Suzie Fowler says her organisation has advocated for the phase-out of battery cages for many years.

"By nature, hens have strong behavioural motivations to forage, perch, lay their eggs in a nest, flap their wings, and dust bathe," Dr Fowler said.

"There is no opportunity for hens to perform these important behaviours in the barren battery-cage environment, which can lead to frustration and stress for the hens."

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