Thought I’d start populating this sub. Seems nice!

So, say you rescue chickens or raise them yourself without the intention of eating them. And they just live their lives and lay unfertilized eggs, e.g. eggs that will never become chickens. And the hen just lays them. Would it be alright to eat the eggs since they’re the equivalent of menstruation?

    • punkisundead [they/them]@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Okay I thought you used the questions as rhetorical devices in your argument. For me tge way you formulated it seemed like you were sure about it or atleast that its your opinion.

      Not saying its the best article, but its one about this topic: https://freefromharm.org/farm-animal-welfare/backyard-chickens-expanding-understanding-harm/

      Most relevant part for me:

      What Do We Do With the Eggs If We Don’t Eat Them?

      When we let go of the anthropocentric notion that chickens’ eggs belong to us, then what could we potentially do with the eggs, if we instead wanted to do something to benefit these most exploited of birds? Well, we can hard boil the eggs and grind up the shells. We can add the shells to the chickens’ grit to give them back some of the vast amounts of calcium that is leached from their bones to produce all of those shells. We can also feed their eggs back to them in order to restore some of the protein and other nutrients they lose in the process of laying far more eggs than their bodies were ever intended to produce.

      • activistPnk@slrpnk.net
        2·
        8 months ago

        Humans don’t consume the shells anyway, so that aspect is compatible with humans consuming the contents of the egg. Feeding the egg shells to the chickens is indeed a good idea so they get back the lost calcium.

        As for the contents of the egg-- I had not heard of that practice of feeding that to the birds as well. I guess this leaves some more questions:

        • is the diet sufficiently balanced if you feed /all/ the eggs back to the bird that produced them?
        • if you just leave the eggs alone, will the bird naturally decide on its own to consume them? Or does a human need to prepare them as bird feed in some way?

        My unresearched knee-jerk speculation is that it would benefit the birds most to swap some of the eggs for other foods.