Are 'free range' eggs really free range.

[Mischief]

Uh-huh?

They'se gonna end up with a whole lot of old chickens and absolutely no eggs that way.

And if they do? Some of us actually do keep chickens because we like them not because they produce eggs. My 4 roosters, 10 hens and 6 ducks see my avian vet when they have a health issue. (Avian vets, BTW, are more expensive than "regular" vets, because avian medicine is a specialized field of veterinary medicine.) In 2014 alone, I spent around $5,000 on vet care for various of my fowl. I could have bought a whole lot of eggs for that money.

 

[Mischief]

I'm always surprised how little vegans, at least many of them, seem to know about hens despite being so vehemently against people eating the eggs of their pet hens.

I find that many vegans and many animal rights activists have surprisingly little knowledge about most animals, not just chickens.

My guys will only eat eggs if I cook the eggs, although they do like the shells. They much prefer to get their protein from eating the bugs they chase, an activity which entertains them as well.

 

[flyingsnail]

Ok, case by case: dairy cows and their babies suffer and die, meat cows suffer and die, laying chickens suffer and die (VAST majority are stuffed in tiny cages and cruelly debeaked), eating hens suffer and die, pigs suffer and die, baby sheep suffer and die, rabbits suffer and die, fish suffer and die of asphixiation. The house cats with no homes suffer and die, same with dogs.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make but you're not seriously looking at particular cases. Animals are used in a variety of ways, in a variety of contexts by humans and the detail matters.

 

[Blobbenstein]

maybe it is a bit mean to expect a chicken eat it's own eggs.....evolutionary, it wouldn't be a good idea for a chicken to enjoy eating eggs....maybe it is a bit like expecting a woman to drink her own milk..

 

[Andy_T]

I did a quick google search as I remember very specifically reading in some advice that it is good for chickens if you feed them back their eggs.

All I found were, of course, advice from poultry / "backyard hens" websites that suggest that eggs are a great food source for chickens, but that you should watch out or they might turn into "egg eaters" - which is obviously a very bad thing as it deprives the "owner" of the eggs. The "remedies" to "egg eating" included everything from clipping their beaks (yay!) to mixing eggs with nasty stuff so that they learn that eggs = bad, to butchering the whole flock.

Did not exactly reinforce my belief in the general benevolence of backyard chicken farmers... (as opposed to people who truly rescue chickens, of course. My guess is that those are two very different groups of people keeping chickens, for very different motives)

 

[Blobbenstein]

if a chicken keeper had a dog, and they didn't want to eat the eggs themselves, maybe it would be better to feed the eggs to the dog. Dogs eat eggs in the wild anyway, so it seems like a more natural set up.

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about raw feeding and it seems the poor egg is often dragged through the mud as a dangerous food for dogs. Opponents of eggs claim that they are too high in cholesterol, they pose a risk of salmonella and that they cause a biotin deficiency. To that, we say nonsense! Eggs are not only a cheap and safe source of raw food for your dog, they are one of the most complete and nutritious meals you can choose!

Feeding Your Dog Raw Eggs – Good Or Bad? | Dogs Naturally Magazine

 

[flyingsnail]

All I found were, of course, advice from poultry / "backyard hens" websites that suggest that eggs are a great food source for chickens, but that you should watch out or they might turn into "egg eaters" - which is obviously a very bad thing as it deprives the "owner" of the eggs. The "remedies" to "egg eating" included everything from clipping their beaks (yay!) to mixing eggs with nasty stuff so that they learn that eggs = bad, to butchering the whole flock.

Eggs don't provide anything hens need, some people with backyard hens will let them eat the broken and malformed eggs while others don't brother because it can lead to bad habits. I'm not sure why you have remedies in quotes, egg eating is obviously maladaptive behavior when they start eating healthy eggs. I also noticed that you've only mentioning remedies that sound terrible and one sound worse than it is, you don't put "nasty things" in their nests instead things that look similar to eggs but aren't (e.g., gulf balls, etc), when the most common reason hens do this is because they aren't being properly fed and/or their environment is poor. Only cruel people would attempt to fix this by

Trying to treat people with backyard chickens as some sort of monolithic group of people doesn't make sense, each person is going to have different beliefs and motivations. Some will treat them very poorly where as others will treat them like family pets, it seems that the vegan objection to eating eggs from your backyard hens is based on inaccurate beliefs about hens.