Raising hens - vegan?

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on in this discussion. It's very easy to decide if a practise is ethically vegan or not. What matters is whether animals are routinely killed or abused in the process. It takes two to produce a baby - one male and one female. So in the (re)production of Ben's chickens a male is inevitably present. One male can inseminate a thousand females, so most males are surplus to requirements and surely we all know what happens to these animals. They are macerated (squashed and cut up till they die). Now this applies to the (re)production of Ben's chicks too. Is this ethical (forget vegan)? NO.
Ben may not have any male chicks. He would have no chicks at all if the original breeder of the chicks had not had male chicks.
 
There's a lot of smoke and mirrors going on in this discussion. It's very easy to decide if a practise is ethically vegan or not. What matters is whether animals are routinely killed or abused in the process. It takes two to produce a baby - one male and one female. So in the (re)production of Ben's chickens a male is inevitably present. One male can inseminate a thousand females, so most males are surplus to requirements and surely we all know what happens to these animals. They are macerated (squashed and cut up till they die). Now this applies to the (re)production of Ben's chicks too. Is this ethical (forget vegan)? NO.
Ben may not have any male chicks. He would have no chicks at all if the original breeder of the chicks had not had male chicks.

Yes, but what if the chickens were rescued?