‘Farm of horrors’: Rotting hens and cockroaches filmed at Mallorca egg farm

Hens with open wounds standing among rotting carcasses, cockroaches in the barns and eggs lying in droppings are what two animal groups say they filmed at a Manacor farm in July, and it’s run by the same company whose Llucmajor site sparked last year’s ‘farm of horrors’ scandal.

Hens with open wounds among rotting carcasses

Animal groups ARDE and Satya Animal say they recorded 54 minutes of footage at the Mirabó farm in Manacor in July. The site can house up to 40,000 laying hens and belongs to Avícola Ballester, one of Mallorca’s egg producers.

They say the recordings show hens with open wounds, birds pecking at each other’s exposed flesh and live hens standing among dead ones in different stages of decomposition, some completely skeletonised. There are also cockroaches, piles of droppings, cobwebs and a mummified rat, with one hen missing an eye.

“These animals are abandoned to their fate,” said Kike Gimeno, a spokesperson for Satya Animal.

A vet says the conditions look ongoing

A vet who reviewed the footage, Alba Nieto Palau, said eggs appeared to be in direct contact with droppings and close to carcasses. She said the problems showed up across many animals and on recordings made on different days, which points to persistent conditions rather than a one-off.

However, she was clear that it’s down to the authorities to check compliance and decide whether any rules were broken. The groups have reported their findings to the Balearic public prosecutor’s office and the regional agriculture department.

The company has ‘no comment’ and the farm is empty

Avícola Ballester answered 21 questions put to it by journalists by saying it wouldn’t comment, although it reserved the right to take legal action over images published without proof of where they came from. 

The Balearic government said the farm currently has no hens, and that the company told it of that decision in October. It added that the farm has been inspected since 2021 without deficiencies, apart from a salmonella outbreak in 2025, and that it has no record of the images. An inspection will take place before any new hens arrive, though no date has been set.

It follows last year’s Llucmajor scandal

Euro Weekly News reported in June 2025 that Mercadona and Alcampo pulled free-range eggs from a Llucmajor farm run by the same company after similar footage emerged. The Balearic government later fined the company around €200,000, although that process is now on hold while a court reviews a separate criminal complaint by a local campaign group.

The 2025 salmonella outbreak at Mirabó itself led to a halt on selling eggs from the affected flock and the culling of birds in that barn, according to a government file seen by journalists.

Meanwhile, the company proposed a second farm in Manacor in June 2026, for 80,000 hens, which neighbours have formally objected to. ARDE wants the project shelved.

What it means for the eggs on your shelf

Nothing in either report points to a new salmonella outbreak or egg recall, and neither says which shops, if any, currently sell eggs from Mirabó. The footage is also from July, and the farm is now empty.

So for now this is a story about conditions on the farm rather than a food safety warning. No decision from prosecutors has been reported yet, so in the meantime shoppers who want to know where their eggs come from can check the code stamped on each shell, which traces back to the farm.