Thoughts on eating pet chicken eggs

[HermioneKipper]

I’ve been vegan a while now and obviously don’t eat eggs.

We have been thinking of rescuing some ex battery farm chickens. We’ll be keeping them as pets and don’t care if they give us any eggs and just want them to have a nice few years chilling in our back garden.

Been pondering the ethical implications of eating their eggs as my baking just isn’t the same without eggs! My children are vegetarian so they will be eaten and won’t go to waste. Does anyone else have chickens as pets and eat their eggs?

I definitely won’t be buying any eggs for my cakes!

It depends on your reasons for veganism, i guess.

There's no food police. No one cares what you eat. You know these eggs are not harming these chickens so what's the problem? Why do you need permission? Who from, exactly?

We have ex batt rescue hens. They make lovely pets and it's rewarding to see them recover and develop personalities. Sadly they don't always live long and it can be difficult/expensive to find a knowledgeable vet who'll treat them as pets rather than livestock. We eat the eggs rather than waste them but many don't continue to lay for long after they arrive so it's definitely not a cost effective way to obtain eggs, they are definitely pets first.

I couldn't ever ethically justify keeping hens if they weren't rescue ones. For every pretty, point of lay, chicken bought a young male chick has been destroyed as very few people want boys.

If you are vegan for climate reasons (in which case thank you) then yes you should absolutely eat the eggs. Food waste is a massive CO2e problem and you will be reducing your carbon footprint by doing so.

Even if you are vegan for animal welfare reasons it doesn’t stack up to me. The chickens themselves can’t use that product (it’s not like honey for example where by taking it you are depriving the bees of it). It’s literally a waste product. Do you use the poop on your garden? It’s the same thing. The breeding thing is irrelevant once those creatures exist, particularly since you rescued them and didn’t buy them and thus encourage the industry.

Eating the eggs is the right thing to do for the planet.

If you don’t want to eat them yourself, you could give them away to friends or family who would otherwise buy supermarket eggs?