The truth about Chickens and EGGS

DO EGGS COME OUT OF THE CHICKEN’S BUTT?

Yes, that’s right, eggs come out of the chicken’s butt. The most common question I get asked. The cloaca is an opening that constitutes a single channel into which the terminations of the chicken’s posterior intestine, genital and urinary apparatus flow.

But let’s look at another question, one that I have dedicated the entire article to:

So are the eggs from free-range chickens, cared for with love and attention, ethical and do not cause suffering to the animal? They make eggs anyway…

Apparently not, even in the case of free-range egg-laying hens it is not ethical; quite the opposite and it is completely unnatural. Now I’ll explain why.

CHICKEN: A BIRD APART?
It starts from the principle that we have a wrong consideration of the chicken because we consider it something separate from all other birds. Actually it’s not like that.

In nature, the female of the red junglefowl, the wild ancestor of domesticated chickens, does not lay more than 25 eggs throughout the year.
She only lays them at certain times (just like other animals go into heat) and just like other birds she doesn’t dream of laying unfertilized eggs. In fact, egg-laying in current egg-laying hens is stimulated by certain artificially recreated conditions: availability of food, temperature and light, presence of a nest.

WHY DOES THE CHICKEN LAY EGGS, ANYWAY?
But let’s go back to the wild ancestor of egg-laying chickens: so the female lays a maximum of 25 eggs, always for reproductive purposes; she wouldn’t dream of laying eggs when she has already laid others in a period immediately preceding; in other words, the chicks must be of roughly the same age.

SELECTION OF HYPER-PRODUCERS
It happened with industrialization that specimens of particularly “productive” hens were selected, until a selected species was obtained that produced up to 100 eggs throughout the year, but of course the breeders were not yet satisfied. In modern farms, hens lay an average of 260 eggs per year, about 10 times the amount of eggs laid by their wild ancestors.

This productivity was achieved through further selection and through particular conditions in which these animals are forced to live; continuously stimulated for laying by artificial light, fed with specific feeds, determined temperatures, and……

EGGS ON EGGS ON EGGS…
As mentioned before, a bird would not dream of laying eggs on eggs; in nature it lays eggs and then begins the brood. So why do these hens, albeit selected and doped, continuously produce eggs? Because the eggs are continuously taken away from them!

EGGS PREYED UPON IN NATURE
In nature it is normal for eggs to be preyed upon and obviously animals have evolved to survive this condition as well, laying other eggs in case the previous ones have been taken away (preyed upon, in the eyes of their instinct). And it’s quite logical… a sparrow lays eggs, a fox comes along and eats them, the sparrow will lay another brood. The reproductive instinct is strong in them as it is in us.

EGGS TAKEN AWAY IN CAPTIVITY
The continuous removal of eggs causes strong distress in the hen, a double distress:

• emotional because for the hen the loss of eggs is a trauma (it is practically knowing that one’s own chicks have been eaten)
• physical because it will lay another brood and this is not painless for the hen

Yes, it would seem that for the hen it is a demanding and very painful thing; in addition, the formation of the egg requires the production of a lot of substances that obviously the hen takes away from itself, the most burdensome being calcium, which is taken from the bones. And this leads them to suffer from osteoporosis and exposes them to risk of fractures.

HOME-BASED FARMS… NOT ETHICAL ANYWAY
So even home-based farms are anything but ethical. In nature, hens lay their eggs on trees, in the presence of a nest, food, and therefore necessarily a male. Something that is also artificially reproduced in a home-based farm (albeit in good faith for those who raise them); in addition with feed, with a species selected ad hoc for centuries, with the removal of eggs, these hens produce them continuously; and for them it is not a walk in the park, it is an emotional and physical stress and apparently it is completely unnatural.

ORIGIN OF HOME-BASED HENS
Furthermore, even hens raised at home somewhere must come from somewhere and usually come from farms where they are still raised in a specific way, therefore selected from broods where probably most males are killed immediately.

ADDITIONAL REASON
So if ethical reasons for animals were not enough, there is an additional reason not to eat eggs anymore…

“If eggs were the period of human women, would you continue to eat them?” Well, if you hadn’t already figured it out, eggs are the period of hens and compared to the period of women they have an aggravating factor: they come out of the butt…

Bon appétit!

ps: if you want to learn more, take a look here: https://freefromharm.org/animal-products-and-ethics/backyard-eggs/?fbclid=IwAR3deeBbOBiiwCQwVucgRUuBYBBYXy1jSRIf43X9H_Arzuj4E9tZE3Q9mLU