A Mullumbimby weekend found homes for hundreds of former battery hens

Who Gives a Cluck spent an adoption weekend in Mullumbimby pairing 247 former battery hens with people who had already agreed to take them. ABC News reported the day on October 24, 2026.

Julie O'Shea started the charity in 2017. It has rehomed nearly 13,000 hens, about 1,700 of them this year. The group pays the farmer $2 a hen under an arrangement of about seven years. The farm, on the Queensland side of the border, is not named. The hens arrived in a purpose-built trailer and walked on flat ground. Volunteers checked wings, feet, eyes, and throats. Eleven birds failed those checks and went to a hen hospital in Brisbane or a local sanctuary.

The charity keeps a village of about 100 chickens, including a rooster named Jack Black, for birds that stay because they have companions. Hens older than about 4.5 years can remain in a Golden Girl wing. Eight adoption Saturdays a year run from the Sunshine Coast to Grafton. Cindy Alice, who has adopted for five years, took 12 hens this year. Caged eggs are still a large share of what Australians buy. This weekend's news is the 247 birds that left with adopters, and the 11 that went on to care.