Posted on 04/19/2025 10:16:23 PM PDT by Red Badger
Every spring, I’d eagerly await my special package — a box that arrived peeping. Inside were just-hatched chicks, still egg-shaped and covered in down.
I would raise the chicks in my home office. During our first month together, there was always a chick or two in my sweater, on my shoulder or perching atop my head. They considered me their mother.
Later, when they moved outside to a coop, they ranged freely over the eight acres my husband and I own in rural New Hampshire. Whenever they caught sight of me, they would greet me as if I were a member of the Beatles, racing toward me with wings outstretched. When they began to lay eggs, I was elated. I had gotten the hens to keep me company, but nothing tastes better than an egg from a free-range chicken you know personally. I’ve been a vegetarian since 1980, so I felt great about accepting this gift from my sweet little flock, which I called the Ladies.
I had no idea that while the Ladies enjoyed shelter and sunshine, fresh bugs and freedom, their newborn brothers faced a gruesome fate shared by 6.5 billion male chicks around the world each year. These male birds can’t lay eggs but also aren’t raised for meat. Because they come from egg-laying breeds, they don’t grow big or fast enough to be used for food. So they are ground up alive or gassed to death.
The practice is especially egregious because unlike many baby mammals and songbirds, which are born blind, naked and helpless, newborn chicks are capable little creatures. Within hours of hatching, they are standing, running and successfully finding food. When they are thrown into the grinder or gasser at 1-day old, these male chicks are alert and aware.
Unwittingly, I was complicit in this monstrosity.
The good news is that a new technology can help end it. Called in ovo sexing, it determines the sex of the chick embryo long before it hatches, allowing the producers to get rid of the male eggs and hatch only the females. Eggs from in ovo sexed hens have been available in some European countries since 2018 and now make up about 20 percent of Europe’s market, driven in large part by bans on chick culling in several countries, including Germany and France. Come summer, the first such eggs are due to become available in U.S. supermarkets.
It’s a breakthrough that could be one of the greatest gains in animal welfare of the century. But we consumers have to make it happen.
There are different ways to do in ovo sexing. Some machines can determine the sex of the chicken embryos by analyzing a small sample of the contents of the egg, rather like prenatal embryo testing for humans. Others use wavelengths of light to penetrate the egg and reveal colors that correlate with sex. The investment in this technology isn’t cheap, but it’s partly offset by savings: It eliminates the cost (estimated at $500 million) of incubating eggs that will never turn into laying hens for the market and of killing and disposing of slain chicks.
Some hatcheries may be put off by the initial cost of installing the new technology. Consumers would have to pay perhaps one to three pennies extra per egg. (But that’s nothing compared with recent increases in egg prices).
At least three U.S. companies — Kipster, NestFresh and Happy Egg — are working to offer supermarket eggs that make use of the technology. NestFresh, which specializes in humanely free-range and pasture-raised hens, appears to be the farthest along, with plans to offer the eggs in stores this summer under a Humanely Hatched label.
More companies could follow — but only under public pressure.
Consumer demand for more humane treatment of farm animals has already propelled important changes in the food industry, from cage-free eggs in supermarkets to plant-based burgers in restaurants. That’s why organizations like the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals are urging consumers who buy eggs to purchase them from companies that use in ovo testing. Or you can write the company producing the egg brand you usually buy, urging it to adopt the new technology. Visit your local grocery store; tell the manager you want to spare male chicks from culling — and that you will back your conviction with your dollars. If you raise chickens at home, call the hatchery where you get your chicks to voice your preference.
Scientists are now documenting what backyard chicken enthusiasts already knew: Far from being mean, dirty and stupid, chickens are affectionate, clean and smart. They can recognize individuals by their faces, both avian and human. They can alert flock mates to the presence of food and danger — specifying in their call whether a treat is particularly delicious and whether the predator is coming by land or air. A recent study found that roosters may be able to pass the mirror test, which many psychologists consider a sign of self-awareness.
Chickens also have distinct personalities. Some are remarkably courageous, like my neighbor’s rooster, who chased a fox from his flock into the woods. Others are clever and affectionate, like a rooster who learned to use the doorknob to let himself into the house — where he would often bring his favorite person gifts, like bits of plumbing he’d found in the garage.
High supermarket prices have consumers hyperfocused on the cost of eggs. But as adorable spring chicks remind us, chickens are not just food. We need to consider the real cost of eggs not just to our wallets but also to the lives of these thinking, feeling creatures.
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Sy Montgomery is the author of “What the Chicken Knows” and other books on animals.
It’s called “lacto-ovo-vegetarian” They eat eggs and milk because the critter is not harmed by the production of the foodstuff.
Vegans are a whole other can of worms...
The only reason farm animals have a chance at life at all is because they are tasty when we eat them.
That is their sole purpose.
There is no reason to either maltreat or deify them. They are work critters, here at our begging and disposal.
And they float, making them very popular for tropical rice paddy bug patrol. Domesticated ducks can still fly enough to evade predators. Unlike most creatures, they DON'T taste like chicken!
Another TRANNY THREAD?
Male chicks?
I saw a hen walking with 11 baby chicks.
I quickly built a cage for them.
After a while we realized 8 of them were roosters.
The poor hens were being raped by one after another.
The girls run free but I locked up the roosters.
I didn’t want to take them to the pound and let the government know we have chickens.
I didn’t know how to get rid of them and they were starting to fight each other.
I found a processor.
He charged 6 dollars each to cut them and package them and said to come back in 20 minutes.
The meat is too tough, so my wife will make dog food out of them and give some to the neighbors.
“Some chickens are more equal than others.” ~ Animal Farm
A really interesting video, ‘The Natural History of the Chicken’ was put out by PBS in 2006. I always recommend it for anyone ‘involved’ with chickens.
https://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Chicken-Janet-Bonney/dp/B0000TPAR4
I’ve raised chickens and sold their unborn children for profit! My eventual goal is to breed and raise Heirloom varieties for sale to others as pullets. I’ve raised, killed and butchered my own Chicken Dinners. And the MIRACLE of an egg turning into a little fluffy chick will never be lost on me. ;)
Seriously? I’m a broken record on this topic, but the CLOSER you can get to your food sources, the better it is for you. Grow it. Bake it. Raise it. Hunt it. Fish it. Butcher it. Cook it. Eat it. At the very least, buy your dairy, meat, eggs and veggies LOCALLY. Eat SEASONALLY so you’re not eating Strawberries in the dead of Winter, shipped to you via ridiculously wasteful practices from CA or MX!
Do whatever small things you can to be more self-sufficient. Mother Government is NOT your friend by any stretch of the imagination.
*STEPS OFF SOAPBOX* :)
And, yes. I’m sorry ‘boy chicks’ are expendable. Glad to see some companies doing something about it.
Your credibility on everything went out the window when you said you were a vegetarian but ate eggs. What BS! Kinda like taking an oath of chastity to enter the priesthood but dabbling now and then with the kiddies.
“I admit that when I think about the male chick’s, I am bothered by their fates.”
In my book, once a male, always a male, so there is NO WAY that male chicks exist, regardless of makup or clothing.
Don’t care. BTW, I have layers. When we discover a young bird is a rooster, we immediately put it down. Multiple roosters are a problem.
Yep like dying in a homemade submarine. It happens faster than your brain gets the message.
I would raise the chicks in my home office. During our first month together, there was always a chick or two in my sweater, on my shoulder or perching atop my head. They considered me their mother.
Later, when they moved outside to a coop, they ranged freely over the eight acres my husband and I own in rural New Hampshire. Whenever they caught sight of me, they would greet me as if I were a member of the Beatles,
this is what perverts do with children.
Ok, read the article. Figures my mother knew about them and would roast one every now and then, she was from Normandy. The French did a lot of clipping male chicks. The main drawback I see to raising them commercially is they take longer to grow than a hen which can be as little as 6 weeks. They are less aggressive than a regular rooster and can be kept with other capons. Bigger and tastier than a regular chicken. Maybe a cottage industry. I would be a customer.
They taste better!
Beef stock can be a pain. They do stupid and sometimes dangerous things. I heard a young 4h stockman say IN 3 MORE MONTHSI WILL BE COOKING YOU!
Ergo the ubiquitous ANIMAL PROTIEN
Duck itch! Endemic in local lakes in spring
SHE BETTER NEVER SEE HOW SAUSAGE IS MADE !!!!!!!!!
“Wow, Al was named after a tough chicken.”
What does AI have to do with anything?
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