Premature death is a common occurrence on factory farms. Many hens meet a cruel and prolonged death when their bodies become lodged underneath the feeding trays or trapped in the wire of the cages. With no escape, these hens must endure the constant physical assault of being trampled by the other hens. Other hens succumb to untreated sickness, disease, or injures.

Numerous dead birds are overlooked by management, who have neither the time nor inclination to remove the corpses. At both Buckeye Egg Farm and Daylay, severely decomposed hens were discovered in cages with live hens. The hens were left to slowly rot and decompose in their cages. Their cage mates are forced to live with the stench this creates.

Factory farms treat the hens’ lives as mere commodities, to be disposed of once they are no longer useful. At Daylay, a live hen was found in a dumpster filled with trash and hundreds of dead birds.

Once a hen’s egg production declines, they are 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 trash cans.