"I believe we invade the lives of animals and that's not fair," Mahmoud Ascarie said Monday. "I believe that animals have the right to enjoy their lives."

When Ascarie bought the old Olson family egg farm on Ca'ada Road two years ago, he was distraught to see nearly 140,000 hens crammed into cages in a dank, fetid barn. So distraught he joined People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Last week, Ascarie arranged for almost 2,000 hens to be rescued by various animal welfare groups. The rest of the birds - spent hens no longer capable of laying eggs - were packed into trucks and shipped off to the kill barn.

"I tried to save all of them," Ascarie said. "I don't like the justification that chickens don't have brains. They feel the pain."

According to Liz Sturla, executive director of Animal Place in Vacaville, who coordinated the rescue, chickens bred for commercial egg farms lead short, unhappy lives.

At hatcheries, males chicks are killed. Females have their beaks cut off so they won't injure each other when they're jammed into the squat, 18-by-24-inch cages, typical of most egg farms, that are shared by as many as nine hens. Unable to move, chickens in the lower cages are pelted with the droppings of their neighbors above. At the slaughterhouse, the hens are strung up, their throats are slit then ground into pet food.

"The laws we have to protect them are minimal from the beginning of their lives to the slaughterhouse," Sturla said.

Just as there are no state or federal regulations governing how chickens should be caged, there are no set rules defining cage-free and free-range chickens. According to the Humane Society of the United States, cage-free means birds are housed in warehouses, and have some freedom of movement. Free range chickens can roam outside and engage in natural nesting and foraging behaviors.

Sturla said cage-free operations are better for the chickens, but don't address the perception that chickens have less moral worth than companion birds like parakeets and canaries.

"The time when they're alive is, I would assume, a higher quality of life, because they're able to move around," she said, "but the beginning and the end are the same. Our views of them should not impact how they're treated."

Ed Olivera, owner of the Olivera Egg Ranch, who has raised eggs at the farm for many years, said the chickens are housed so as to maximize profits. But a smart farmer, he said, will consider the chickens' health.

"There's a certain point where you get maximum production," he said. "Nobody tries to make the birds suffer. If they're not happy, they won't lay."

Olivera, who has a retail operation in San Jose, said he's leaving South County for the Central Valley because the facilities are outdated and his rent is too high.

"The economic conditions in the industry are not good right now," Olivera said. "The ranch was losing money. I personally think he will lose more going cage-free, but I can't give an expert opinion."

Cage-free and free range farming is much more labor intensive than a traditional operation, Olivera said. It's more expensive to feed the chickens and the eggs must be gathered by hand, or with expensive technology. Hens allowed to roam free don't produce as many eggs as caged hens, which lay about 35 dozen eggs over their 18 to 24 months of productivity.

Ascarie, a San Jose property developer, realizes that he's not likely to turn a profit at the farm, but said he can afford to lose some money.

""I can tolerate a little, but not that much," he said. "Unfortunately, the public is not willing to pay more."

Consumers pay more for cage-free and free-range eggs, but 99 of every 100 hundred eggs sold in the country come from caged birds, Olivera said.

"It's kind of a fringe 1 percent market spot," he said.

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