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Loading...What is an Egg to a Chicken?
- Alisa Rutherford-Fortunati
- June 21, 2012
- 9:30 am
- 96 comments
Chickens, like all animals, have a language unique to their species. Each sequence of sounds that they chirp, cluck and crow has a social, emotional or personal meaning. And if you spend enough time around these feathered friends you’ll begin, as I did, to hear the stories they are telling.
The rooster’s trumpeting call summoning his hens to dinner,
The rapid peeps of chicks as they search for their mother,
The oscillating clucks of a hen as she gives birth to an egg…
Of all the chicken calls I learned during the year I spent volunteering on different organic farms, I think it was the hen’s egg-laying song that shocked me the most. Somehow I had thought it would be a quiet process, that the hens would sneak away to their favorite hiding spot and peacefully begin their nest. While hens do try to find solitude, as the laying process begins, they also start to emit an unmistakable pattern of rapid and rolling clucks accentuated by a noticeably louder “Bwak!” at the end of each sequence. They sing this song with such intensity, wide-eyed and agitated, until the egg has finally been pushed out. It is enough to make anyone grateful that they weren’t born an egg-laying hen.
Read more: Animal Rights, Behavior & Communication, Conscious Consumer, Do Good, Easter, Food, Inspiration, Less Common Pets, Pets, Spirit, Vegan, Vegetarian, backyard chickens, chickens, Do chickens care if you take their eggs?, eggs
Alisa Rutherford-Fortunati
Gentle World is a vegan intentional community and non-profit organization, whose core purpose is to help build a more peaceful society, by educating the public about the reasons for being vegan, the benefits of vegan living, and how to go about making such a transition. For more information about vegan food and other aspects of a vegan lifestyle, visit the Gentle World website and subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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96 comments
+ add your ownI am vegan, I buy free-range eggs for my son (who is not vegan) and they really are free-range - they come from chickens who are free to wander around a farm and do what chickens do, they are well cared for and happy. I don't see anything wrong in that. Each egg is NOT the beginning of a chicken fertilized or not - that's like saying menstrual blood contains the beginning of a baby each month - a fertilized egg is the beginning of a baby, an unfertilized one is not.
If the chicken was really broody, you could let her keep some eggs to sit on, if she was a pet, and her eggs weren't really needed. I think most chickens have that desire to nest bred out of them. On a working farm, I think you have to accept compromises that the chicken will have an otherwise great life (compared to a factory farm) and will have to give up her eggs. I'm 99% vegan, so I'm trying not to eat eggs anyway...
For those of you posting saying there is nothing wrong with eating eggs from free-range hens, I think it is worthwhile to note that the vast majority of people get chicken's eggs from grocery stores, not from their own or someone else's backyard. Even chicken's eggs that are labeled "free range" and/or "organic" come from hens who have unpleasant, caged lives and then will become chicken meat when they stop laying. If you want to raise hens as friends first and eat their eggs if they're not too protective of them, I don't think that's horrible. But just like you should not buy a puppy from a puppy-mill pet store, you should not buy chickens from the slaughter industry. So many people think they can handle chickens in their backyards and end up abandoning them, or abandoning chicks that are accidentally conceived and hatched, that you should have no problem finding a rescue chicken, just as you would with a dog or cat. It's important to remember that no animals are here for your purposes -- they all have their own desires and emotional lives and the desire to act freely. Hens are no exception, and mustn't be treated simply as a producer of eggs for human consumption.
Thank you for sharing.
this made me feel really guilty and sad
Interesting, however, plants give us their seeds, nuts and leaves for us to consume. Who are we to say that a plant's existence is not as important as a chicks? Many believe because plants have no nerves and feel no pain that it is fine to dine on these once living beings.
What is a being? Anything that lives on this planet be it lichen, egg or animal, bird, so many organisms.
We all feed on what was once living entities. Until Mother Nature redesigns our planet where we can all survive by feeding on inorganic entities, such as getting our food from rock pate, we will simply have to eat the way Nature designed us. If one wishes to be vegan or vegetarian, fine, follow this path. I for one, love the taste of free range chicken eggs and will eat them without guilt.
Or is this also anti-abortion in the sense that once the egg is fertilized it is a living being?
@ Colleen P who wrote: "Curah B. it kills her because she and her ancestors were slected to lay more eggs, like a woman getting 2 cycles a month."
Do you have any scientific evidence to support this statement? I have been keeping hens for some twelve years now. I've had them live ten years, and they die of old age. Caged birds, without a mate, will do the same, laying an egg a day. They take a break during winter, unless "forced" to continue laying, by being kept in a heated coop, with artificial lighting -- which "tricks" them into thinking it's still Spring/Summer. As soon as the days grow shorter, and the weather cools, laying slows down & then stops!
And: "and it is symbolism. some people do not eat eggs because of what they are. even when infertile. it is symbolic and bad luck to eat them"
In Pagan times, eggs and eating them, connoted fertility & rebirth, and they were actually symbols of good luck! That's how they became symbols of "Easter".
@ Curah B, (1 of 2) Great comment ... agree 100%. All your points are right on!
I keep a small flock of free-range chickens. They do have different personalities & some are more "intelligent". The smarter birds survive longer. They "instinctively" know they're safer in the hen house & make a point of returning before sundown.
Out of the 10 (now 9) I had one hen who would go "broody" frequently & would hide. I'd find her nest, remove the eggs & make sure she was safely tucked in every night. If she decided to go broody in the hen house, I would let her sit on her eggs, since I have a rooster, but her eggs were not fertile & she would sit on the "duds" for 21 days, sometimes longer, until her cycle passed. I once found her sitting on 39 – Yes, thirty nine! – eggs. She never produced a single chick!
She built her last nest & hid & would not come when I called her. I searched for her till it grew dark. I found her 3 days later; she had been dragged off her nest by a predator. Ironically, all the eggs were unfertilized & she died because she didn't behave as the rest of her sisters!
@ Curah B (cont'd, 2)
This "article" is emotional & unscientific, in particular this statement -- "no matter if it is fertilized or not, each egg is the beginning of a chicken".
An unfertilized egg is food, not the "beginning of a chicken". Even if fertilized, if it has not been sat on & warmed, the embryo doesn't begin to develop, so it's just an egg! Broodiness is controlled by hormones. Like humans, hens have "cycles" and will go broody, even if they haven't mated & there is no rooster around! No different than a woman without a significant other; she will ovulate, regardless.
Eating their own eggs isn't always a sign of nutritional deficiency. Hens love the taste of eggs & will happily eat them, given the chance. They are omnivores, and will even eat the occasional mouse or mole!
Since my girls are free-range & I supplement their diet with oyster shell & organic oats, flax, millet & sunflowers, I know they get everything they need. They eat the occasional egg because they enjoy the taste. I also give them raw milk, which they love on a hot day -- as well as brown rice, macaroni, watermelon, various fruits, berries & veggies -- zucchini is a favorite!
Interesting article and comments. I must say that, as one who keeps a laying hen myself, I've never seen her take any notice at all of any egg after she's laid it - she's happy to go off foraging in the garden as soon as I open the door of her coop. And I supplement her diet with grain and shell grit, so she's not losing any vital nutrients in egg production. I think we can sometimes read too much into animals' behaviour.
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