Your own free range chickens for eggs??

Question

How do you feel about having your own free range chickens for eggs?
Before I decided I was going to live a vegan lifestyle I always wanted to raise a couple free range chickens for eggs. I've since given up the idea... But lately I've been considering this again for the future. Knowing the eggs are coming from my own backyard from happy chickens would make it different... I think. 
What are your thoughts??

Answer

I personally still wouldn't do it. Is it a better option than factory eggs? Of course. But my biggest problem with any animals products is that the animals are incapable of consenting to me taking them. I don't take things from animals that weren't made for me, and eggs weren't made for humans. I've also always thought eggs were disgusting anyway 🤢😷

Answer

I think you need to consider all sides. Not just ethics. From a health perspective eggs are one of the highest sources of cholesterol. I guess what's the point of including them in your diet? There's no need for excess protein, as you get that from plants. They come with a lot of baggage for very little benefit.

Answer

These are my chickens! They are very happy, will eat your compost, and you can let them out (just don’t feed them out of the coop and that way when you rattle the feed they’ll come running back in.) Make sure to be prepared for predators, I just lost 5 of mine to a weasel -_- so put them in their coop at night or make their whole area very predator proof. Other than that I love the whole thing.

Answer

I'm also kind of interested how people feel about this. I think if it's done properly it can be ethically fine. With standard free range eggs I know a big issue is the killing of male chicks, but if you're not mass producing eggs I guess you wouldn't really run into that. 🤷🏻‍♀️ I would maybe eat an egg if I really knew it came from a nice happy source but I haven't found any that are good enough

Answer

I have always enjoyed my own chickens and my girls eggs are way better than the store bought ones. And it's great to know they are happy n healthy and that the nutrients is better bc they are getting an adequate diet. But a little side note... if you are ever pregnant with chickens you can not handle anything with their poop. They carry the same risks as cleaning the cat litter for the toxmosis, I think is the name. I'm 26w pregnant and my wife now has to tend to them till the baby is born.

Answer

Did you know that chickens don’t “naturally” lay eggs every day? 
They have been selectively bred for 100’s of years to lay an egg every day because its profitable. 
“Naturally” chickens would only lay a small clutch of eggs every year for procreation purposes. 
As a vegan, I think it’s okay to adopt RESCUE chickens from battery cages etc, but I wouldn’t eat their eggs. Nor would I buy chickens for a breeder. 
This sounds really sick, but I’d actually cook them up and feed them back to them (hear me out)
I used to keep chickens and if you leave the eggs in the coop, they actually naturally eat them sometimes to get the calcium and nutrients back. In the winter I used to cook the eggs first with oatmeal because it helps keep them warm in the cold weather and my girls loved it (a lot of chicken owners will also recommend this) and then I used to use the shells in their grit.
Now that being said, they didn’t eat all their eggs so I used to give the excess away to my work colleagues who were omnis because I thought it was better that they ate from my free range girls than from caged hens. 
Personally to me, veganism means not taking from animals, because it’s not mine. And I really don’t need the eggs to survive - so why do I need to take them?

Answer

I think it's totally up to each individual, but as another poster mentioned, I personally probably wouldn't. Just because I don't think they're ours to take. But it ultimately falls down to what you're happy with!

Your own free range chickens for eggs??

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