Looking down at my girls I think of the chooks I have purchased over the years form various battery operations - hens who had been living in vile and cramped conditions for a year while they pumped out hundreds of eggs were suddenly deemed to to be worthless and sold for $2.50 each - less than the price of a cup of coffee.
Each year or so I would peddle or drive up to the local battery farm with a cardboard box and buy three or four girls.
The look in their eyes when they were gently deposited into their new pen with a lemon tree, ladder for perching, fresh straw, water and food and a fox-proof hutch was wonderful.
Within a day or so these formerly limp, thin little birds were acquiring a glossy sheen to their feathers, running about in delight as they pecked unwary insects and running towards me when I brought out their breakfast. Their eggs were and are, always delicious.
Of course, down south on the apple isle, while the move has delighted animal welfare activists, it has egg producers worried.
Caged in: Hens stacked up in a battery laying operation.The State Government announced $2.5 million in funding in Thursday's Budget to implement the ban and work to boost the number of non-cage operations.
Animals Australia campaign director Lyn White lauded the move.
"For years animal groups and the community have been calling on Australian governments to act on this obvious cruelty," she said.
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