Need some help Please
- Thread starter Me123456789
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Lou
Forum Legend
David3
Forum Legend
Hi Me,
In commercial egg-production facilities, hens are removed from the egg-laying flock when their egg production begins to decline. This allows the farmer to introduce younger, more productive hens into the flock. To offset the economic loss of the removed hens, those hens are sold for meat. It's purely an economic decision, but a violent one. This process ("culling") is openly discussed in commercial poultry education: https://www.poultry.msstate.edu/pdf/extension/culling.pdf .
Also, when new egg-laying chickens are bred in order to replace old chickens, any male chicks are immediately culled and killed ("chick culling"). This is a purely economic decision - please follow the explanation: Egg-laying chickens are selectively-bred to have small body sizes, so that (1) the hens will convert its feed nutrients into eggs, rather than into body weight, and (2) more hens can be fit into a smaller facility. However, that means that male offspring of egg-laying hens will (1) never grow large enough to meet consumer expectation for poultry size/weight, and (2) they obviously can't lay eggs. Here is more information: Chick culling - Wikipedia . Again, these people don't mean to be cruel, but these practices are an unnecessary form of violence.
That's why we don't eat eggs.
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In commercial egg-production facilities, hens are removed from the egg-laying flock when their egg production begins to decline. This allows the farmer to introduce younger, more productive hens into the flock. To offset the economic loss of the removed hens, those hens are sold for meat. It's purely an economic decision, but a violent one. This process ("culling") is openly discussed in commercial poultry education: https://www.poultry.msstate.edu/pdf/extension/culling.pdf .
Also, when new egg-laying chickens are bred in order to replace old chickens, any male chicks are immediately culled and killed ("chick culling"). This is a purely economic decision - please follow the explanation: Egg-laying chickens are selectively-bred to have small body sizes, so that (1) the hens will convert its feed nutrients into eggs, rather than into body weight, and (2) more hens can be fit into a smaller facility. However, that means that male offspring of egg-laying hens will (1) never grow large enough to meet consumer expectation for poultry size/weight, and (2) they obviously can't lay eggs. Here is more information: Chick culling - Wikipedia . Again, these people don't mean to be cruel, but these practices are an unnecessary form of violence.
That's why we don't eat eggs.
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Luis Halson
Forum Practitioner
Actually (under my ethics) keeping chickens is good, as you are giving life to the chickens (they wouldn't exist without us). The trouble is, many farms don't treat their livestock with respect. They keep them in cramped cages where they cannot even move their wings, and male chicks are gassed or ground alive. Even free-range/organic egg production systems involve killing the male chicks.
The solution: Veganism or keeping your own chickens and actually treating your own chickens ethically.
The solution: Veganism or keeping your own chickens and actually treating your own chickens ethically.
We don't need them to live happy, healthy lives, so why contribute to so much misery? The battery caged egg-laying chicken is arguably the most abused animal on the planet. They live terrible lives full of pain and filth, and then are slaughtered mercilessly.
David3
Forum Legend
Hi Luis,
Yes, definitely, even free-range/organic egg production involves chick culling.
It's possible to keep chickens as pets. However, I think it's important to remember that chickens are flying birds (except for the industrial chicken breeds, which grow too heavy for their wings to support flight). A chicken's wings are made for flying - they don't really belong in cages or coops.
Video of wild chicken (jungle fowl) flying. Chickens don't really need us for survival. They just need us to protect their habitat.
More information about the red jungle fowl: Red junglefowl - Wikipedia
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Ok, I haven't asked why keeping hens in cramped cages is wrong, I asked why are you considering eating eggs is wrong. What about organic eggs?
Note: I grow up in the coutryside, caring for a variety of animals/lifestock. We had a hen, chicken and roster yard for them to run around, a coup with nests from hay for the hens to sleep in and lay their eggs there during the night. I remeber in the morning as the roster would sing I would wake up go feed the birds and then check the coup for eggs. (nothing like organic fresh eggs in the morning). Now we would check the egg to see if there were fecundated or not before eating them.
It didn't stress the hens, it didn't take anything of them. And on top of all that, do you know what happens if I leave the eggs laied in the coup?
The other hens would come and break the eggs with their beaks in order to kill other hens's potential chicks.
Note: I grow up in the coutryside, caring for a variety of animals/lifestock. We had a hen, chicken and roster yard for them to run around, a coup with nests from hay for the hens to sleep in and lay their eggs there during the night. I remeber in the morning as the roster would sing I would wake up go feed the birds and then check the coup for eggs. (nothing like organic fresh eggs in the morning). Now we would check the egg to see if there were fecundated or not before eating them.
It didn't stress the hens, it didn't take anything of them. And on top of all that, do you know what happens if I leave the eggs laied in the coup?
The other hens would come and break the eggs with their beaks in order to kill other hens's potential chicks.
David3
Forum Legend
You didn't address my stated facts about culling - a practice that is used on both organic and non-organic egg farms. Very clear violence there. Please respond.
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If one eats commercially produced eggs, one inherently supports the way they are treated and the horrible conditions they live in, such as cramped cages. It's cruel, and vegans oppose cruelty to animals. I also wouldn't eat any egg, regardless of its source, because the eggs aren't mine to take. Eating eggs still supports the commodification/exploitation of animals, and vegans generally oppose that.
David3
Forum Legend
Chickens are flying birds. They don't belong in a coup or cage.
The flying birds of the world don't need us to protect them in cages - they take care of themselves just fine.
Yes, animals can exhibit cruel behavior towards one another. The wild animal world is filled with examples of this. We can't change this. We, as humans, can and should make better ethical decisions.
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Actually, when they break the eggs, they do so in order to eat the eggs. It's not done "to kill other hens' potential chicks." Hens aren't out to kill other hens' chicks; a broody hen will sit on other hens' eggs and will raise any resulting chicks as her own, whether or not they hatched from her eggs or another hen's eggs. (Every spring my hens and female ducks try to brood out a couple of nests of eggs, and do so cooperatively, taking turns to sit on the eggs.)
If your chickens are eating their eggs, you need to feed them a more well rounded diet.
Raising chickens for egg production can't be done in the long term without cruelty somewhere along the line.
If you buy chicks to raise, you can buy either straight run (they haven't been sexed, and will be a mix of male and female), or you can buy pullets only. If you buy pullets only, the chicks will have been sexed and the males will have been killed at the hatchery.
So let's say you buy chicks that haven't been sexed. Roughly half will be male. That'll be fine for a while, until they reach sexual maturity, at which point they will be fighting and injuring and killing each other, with varying degrees of aggressiveness, depending on the breed and the individual temperament. Not their fault - they are not doing anything "wrong", just following the dictates of their hormones in an environment fundamentally unsuited for them.
And if you get your subsequent chicks from the eggs laid by your original hens, you'll get multiple roosters and the same problems.
I grew up on a farm. I've been keeping chickens (and ducks) myself for about 15 years, all rescues of one kind or another. At one point, I had 8 roosters, and had to keep them all separated. Don't even get me started on the issues with male ducks.
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BTW, the rate of egg laying we see in domesticated chickens is not natural for them; they have been bred for many generations to lay eggs year round, and at unnaturally high rates. Before we did that to them, they laid enough eggs in the springtime for a clutch of eggs, just like any other bird.
As a result of this unnatural rate of egg laying that we have forced upon chickens as we have domesticated them, hens have incredibly high rates of cancer of the reproductive system. Most hens will die of these cancers if they aren't slaughtered or taken by predators first.
My avian vet at the U of I veterinary school clinic told me that chickens are such reliable developers of cancers of the reproductive system that they are the animals used in the first line of study of such cancers in human women.
As a result of this unnatural rate of egg laying that we have forced upon chickens as we have domesticated them, hens have incredibly high rates of cancer of the reproductive system. Most hens will die of these cancers if they aren't slaughtered or taken by predators first.
My avian vet at the U of I veterinary school clinic told me that chickens are such reliable developers of cancers of the reproductive system that they are the animals used in the first line of study of such cancers in human women.
Lovely birds!
While I agree that wild fowl just need us to protect their habitat, including migration routes, I want to make sure that the less informed who may read your words don't assume that they can release a domesticated bird into the wild.
There is no more helpless animal in the world than a domesticated bird. Every year, countless Easter ducklings and chicks are "released" after they outgrow the "cute" stage. They meet horrible, cruel deaths. If I ever met one if these idiots in the act, I'd probably end up in jail
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One of the things I may have missed reading posts here but don't think has been mentioned is that hens lay more eggs as a biological response to them being taken away. Obviously the extent to which that is done is also the extent to which the hen's body is stressed to produce more eggs.
That's really only true wrt broody hens. But it's why, when I have one or more who are broody, that I boil some eggs, mark then, and return them to the nests, so that they have eggs to sit on that won't hatch out.
(It is absolutely true of captive birds who haven't been domesticated. But we've been screwing with the genetics of domesticated chickens and the domesticated species of ducks for so long that their egg-laying patterns have very little left of what's natural.)
Eggs are fill of artery clogging cholesterol. I was following a diet that included alot of eggs before I started plant based food and my cholesterol went way up.
They just aren't as healthy as the world has hyped them up to be.
Not to mention how the chickens are treated. Even the free range ones. Look it up on Google. It's horrible. You'll be surprised what they consider free range. It's not what you think.
They just aren't as healthy as the world has hyped them up to be.
Not to mention how the chickens are treated. Even the free range ones. Look it up on Google. It's horrible. You'll be surprised what they consider free range. It's not what you think.
