(My husband) Ken and I have both lived in the Gloucester district for more than 60 years. 

Like most farmers we have had to work hard and struggled with drought, high interest rates at 22 per cent and low commodity prices. 

To stay on our farm at Wards River, we diversified into poultry in 1997 with an RSPCA accredited barn shed. Barn sheds and free range sheds with large numbers of hens were becoming more common in the poultry industry and were very different from the cage sheds that were producing the majority of eggs for the Australian consumer. 

Everyone in the industry had a great deal to learn about managing large numbers of hens in cage free sheds. We attended many seminars and workshops. 

In 2005, the Australian government made old cage systems illegal and after eight years of experiencing the ins and outs of hen behaviour, mainly cannibalism, we had no hesitation in building a climate controlled, air-conditioned, enriched cage system with colony cages housing 28 birds in each section to fill the gap left by the closure of the old cage sheds. 

This shed exceeded the Australian standards for animal welfare. At that time 93 per cent of Australian consumers bought caged eggs. 

Now 18 years later, 60 per cent of Australian consumers still buy cage eggs but there is an increasing market for free range eggs. 

In 2007, we decided to change our RSPCA accredited barn shed into a free range facility and built another free range shed in 2010. 

We are quality assured, audited and licensed by the Australian Egg Corporation and the NSW Food Safety Authority to produce eggs. 

We meet all the strict requirements of Woolworths and McDonald’s. The feed and the water and air quality in all sheds is visually checked and recorded each day as are all the birds. 

Every day eggs from all three sheds are collected separately and sold to different wholesalers for grading. We have a number of local people working for us.

About 2am on Sunday, March 15 trespassers broke into our cage shed, triggering sensors. 

Police and the RSPCA believe the break-in was perpetrated by animal activists with a political agenda. 

Because our shed met all animal welfare regulations and there was nothing to film to show on their website, the intruders removed birds from some cages and jammed them into other cages, overcrowding these cages and causing the birds a great deal of stress. 

We believe they then took photos of these birds that were jammed into the cages. 

This was a clear act of animal cruelty to obtain footage to be used at a later date against cage egg farmers. 

The activists are prepared to lie, falsify photos and kill animals to deceive the consumer.  

Animal activists and some politicians want to take the consumers’ right to choose which eggs to buy away from them and use footage like this as a means of discrediting Australian farmers. 

A farm in Victoria was broken into two days later and birds were again removed from cages and placed into other cages overcrowding them, the same as what had happened on our farm.

Luckily, we found the birds during our daily check on Sunday morning. It took us two more days to count the birds in all the cages.

We found a number of other cages had been tampered with. All of the birds were stressed and upset.

Mortalities increased that week and egg production dropped.

Police, the RSPCA and NSW Farmers were notified straight away and investigations into the break-in are continuing. 

Charges are expected to be laid by the police and RSPCA if the intruders are caught. It is a clear case of cruelty to animals. 

Last Friday, March 27 the police, the RSPCA and a NSW Farmers representative inspected our farm and reported that our farm met all Australian animal welfare regulations.