Keeping Chickens

Battery Hen Song – Walking In Circles

An interview with Phillip Lee-Woolf who wrote the sad song about the life of a battery hen – Walking In Circles.

Phillip Lee Woolf breeds rare breed chickens, and he has kept hens since childhood. In 2004 Philip started the Legbars of Broadway business breeding Cotswold Legbars (blue eggs) & Burford Brown hens (chocolate brown eggs) for garden pets and domestic egg production.

Philip wrote a poem to illustrate the plight of the prisoned bird, and this was set to music.

The “Walking In Circles” CD is available at the Legbars of Broadway Web site or you can choose to download the song as an mp3.

What do you want to achieve from this song? Is it more awareness by the shopper or a change of farming practices? (or both?)

It is primarily to raise awareness by the shopper because it is ultimately the shopper who has the power to initiate change in production methods. The farmers and suppliers will only respond to market forces. Supermarkets prefer to sell high value products because they earn more money per square centimetre of shelve space, so in theory they would be happier to sell free range if the demand is there.

What is your ideal scenario for “Compassionate farming” (A kinder world) of egg production?

For farmers to embrace the idea that quality at a slightly higher price is better than quantity, and that the majority of their customers actually want a more ethically produced eggs, and from my experience they are prepared to pay. The issue of animal welfare will never be settled as long as we, the public retain the opinion that we have some kind of divine right to cheap eggs. An egg priced at 25-30p is a very cheap meal for one person – a bar of chocolate at double the price is a very expensive luxury with a small fraction of the food value.

If battery hen egg production is the only way we can get enough eggs, how can a compassionate way of farming produce the volume of eggs needed to satisfy demand?

There is more than enough land available for all UK hens to be free range. Suppose we stocked at 10sq.m per chicken (the Organic standard) – which is the highest standard for chickens. Assuming there are 30 million laying hens in the UK Which would need 30m x 10 sq metres = 300,000,000 sq.mtrs. = 300 sq. Km.
The area of the UK is 245,000 sq. Km. So the laying hens would require – 0.122% of the UK land. Since, according to DEFRA:- Grasses & rough grazing = 51.52% Crops & bare fallow = 18.9% Set aside = 3.5% Forestry = 11.65% Then I hardly think 0.122% is an impossible or unattainable figure. So lack of available land area is hardly a sustainable excuse.

The only thing not mentioned which I would like to get in somewhere is the very important point that a healthy Free-Range hen produces a better, tastier egg. Do you have any good quotes on this subject?

I don’t really want to get too scientific about all this. I think we are talking about free-range hens rather than just healthy hens. What I do know is that, without exception, people who keep their own garden hens insist that the flavour, albumin and yolk quality of their eggs is far superior to those of intensively produced eggs. In my experience, a muscular, fit and athletic hen will produce a quality of egg which cannot be matched by an egg produced in the cramped, unhealthy, environment of the battery egg farm, and it is a sad fact that a large percentage of the population has never eaten, and does not know what a real egg is.

Free Range Hens Produce Nutritionally Superior Eggs
Mother Earth News conducted an egg testing project in 2007, finding that eggs produced by free-range hens compare favourably with those produced by battery cage hens. Eggs from free range hens had up to:

• 1/3 less cholesterol
• 1/4 less saturated fat
• 2/3 more vitamin A
• 2 times more omega-3 fatty acids
• 3 times more vitamin E
• 7 times more beta carotene

The study involved 14 flocks across the United States whose eggs were tested by an accredited Portland, Oregon, laboratory, and the results were similar to those obtained via a 2005 study of four flocks. In addition to the Mother Earth News research findings, there have been a number of other studies showing that free-range eggs are healthier than those produced by battery-cage hens.

In other words, if you could change the situation, how would you improve the industry?

To have a total ban on any kind of cage produced egg. This has to be the ultimate solution, and if the industry doesn’t embrace it with open arms, then we are saddled an industry unfit to be producing the nations eggs.

If you’d like to raise money this Easter for a worthy cause, all proceeds from the sale of this song will be donated to the charity Compassion In World Farming.

By sheer good fortune I stumbled across Phillip’s site www.legbarsofbroadway.co.uk as the website was updated with the song, and can therefore claim to be the first person to purchase a copy – a fact backed up by Philip’s email to me when sending me the download links!

Do something ‘worthwhile’ this Easter, purchase Walking In Circles, give it to someone as an alternative to an Easter egg.

Walking In Circles

Related posts:

1. Walking In Circles – A Song About The Sad Life Of A Battery Hen
2. Chickens Kill Fox!
3. Chicken Keeping Update