To show you what your free range egg providers really look like?

[StridTheKiller]

That's all. Rescued a dozen ladies this weekend, ex-free range chicken farm hens. The photo shows the rest. Vile trade.

For the animals with a central nervous system. Yes. Absolutely. Even taught my DSD to not be afraid of spiders and that they're welcome in our house. My DH laughs at me trying to shoo flies out the door because I don't want to splat them.

Bacteria and mould, although alive don't have a central nervous system so can't be compared to animals. Just like I'd have no issues with shopping a carrot.

Extending your argument to non sentient lifeforms is just a bit silly and I think you probably know that. Same as I've been asked over years "oh but don't you think vegetables feel pain toooooo?" No, obviously they don't...

All free range producers are not the same.

I have one farmer friend who has 800 chickens. They have their nice clean chicken shed and 12 acres of grassland and scrub/shrubs for shade. Totally happy, fully feathered birds with plenty of space and freedom. I visit them regularly. DS helps look after them.

Second friend runs a cattery and had 50 hens as a little side line. Again totally happy hens apart from when I chase them out of my garden.

I don't buy eggs from a supermarket though. A - no need and B - too thin shells.

I haven't read through the whole thread so apologies if this has been mentioned already.

The state of most chickens that are rescued is usually down to a hard moult. Hybrid chicken that are specifically bred for egg production will lay eggs consistently for about 18 months at which point they go into a hard moult. After this point they can lay less consistently which makes them of no use to the egg farm, this is why they are got rid of. Other breeds lay less consistently and stop throughout winter.

Now, I am not saying that most chickens aren't kept in awful conditions, which they absolutely are, it is to make people aware that the lack of feathers isn't an indication of welfare most of the time.

There are ways to tell between moult and plucking but the average person can't identify that. A couple of my chooks currently look abysmal because they are in moult but they are very much loved and cared for.

The best thing people can do is by from good backyard keepers who keep pure breed chickens rather than hybrids.

But would the natural life span for a cow not be 0 years? Do they exist without meat eaters? Am not trying to be a vegan basher, just wondering. How did the first cow appear? would they just roam free if we hadn't started eating them albeit in fewer numbers say like bears?

We have hens and our oldest girl died recently, she was well over 10 years old and it was the moult that killed her. She just wasn’t strong enough to go through again.
We only use our own eggs and do without in winter.
Re feather pecking, we sometimes have 3 chicken huts because sometimes they just pick on one bird.

The post I referred to was about “natural” lifespan, not sentience.

We (humans) manage our environment and all the life forms in it, and should do it with due care and compassion for them, to the best of our knowledge.

Arguing that cattle or chickens should all just be left to live out their potential natural lifespan is silly.

I hear what you're saying but my experience is that our non-rescue hens never looked as terrible during moult as some of my rescues have on arrival. It wasn't just about the loss of feathers, they looked pale and drawn and sick. And there were apparently plenty from that batch with injuries etc too.

I should also say when we did have a cockerel(now banned on allotment) we kept every chicken born. We had a male hut/pen and they lived quite happily.

I only buy organic for this reason. Would love even more ethical ones but organic are the best where I live!

I suppose I meant that you can't compare the suffering of a cow to a bacteria or mould which cannot by definition suffer.

And actually, I disagree in principle that the animals we exploit don't deserve some kind of retirement rather than slaughter at a young age. Obviously with our current farming systems this is completely impossible, laughable, but there are some wonderful people out there working on small scales attempting to do just that - see Ahimsa dairy, for example.

I've always bought organic eggs after reading an article in Good Food magazine many years ago about buying organic eggs if you can to ensure the welfare of the hens.

I've found it is very much breed dependent. Hybrids moult hard but my pure breeds always tend to fair better. I have one particular hybrid that looks on deaths door every moult but she's absolutely fine.

I have seen first hand the state of some rescue hens but the majority I have rescued look terrible just due to hard moult.

We buy St Ewes from Tescos which I hope are ok, but they are not organic.

We also by mixed sized when available or medium as I'm sure I read once large eggs are not good for the hens welfare.

Cows as they are in farms today wouldn't exist without human intervention. They've been selectively bred for whatever purposes we decided they should have to best serve us. Of course there would be cows in the wild, just like there are other wild animals. The numbers wouldn't be as high as they wouldn't be forced bred. If we stopped breeding them they would eventually die out which I think is better than putting billions of animals through torture every year and killing them.

@Illpickthatup has this approach ever actually worked?

I had hybrids and never remember them significantly moulting not stopping laying eggs, though they certainly had phases of laying fewer eggs.

I get mine from the farm up the road and it doesn't look like that.

My comment was in response to another comment "why do vegan expect animals to live forever?". Well we don't. We just don't expect humans to force breed them just to kill them off as babies to make a pie.

With the current state We're slaughtering around 70 Billion animals a year for food. 70 BILLION!! Obviously we can't just set 70 Billion animals free and allow them to live out their lives but we can stop breeding them.

What approach?

If farm animals are in poor condition its not caused by farming per se but by bad animal husbandry.
As far as hens go, a lot of stress is caused by rough handling while packing them into crates, and transporting them on open lorries in bad weather.

beans, chickpeas, lentils, tofu etc. Nuts and seeds

I have ulcerative colitis so I can't eat these things except in tiny amounts perhaps once a month.

I get my protein from eggs, fish and chicken. I try and buy the highest welfare possible but with labelling still so ambiguous (in all these animals cases), and in many cases downright deceptive, it's very hard to know what is best. I plumb for organic. I sometimes buy rabbit and venison from the farmers market as at least lived wild.

This has upset me.

'At least you admit that you don't care'.

There is no 'at least' about it.

Yes I agree. Our rescued hens were so pale. Their combs were oversized. And more than anything they had the expression of a creature enduring life. It wasn’t just the lack of feathers. All that resolved itself after a couple weeks.

The rescue that we got all our hens from said organic eggs were the only ones to buy from a supermarket if you wanted eggs from hens with some semblance of a life.