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> free range doesn't mean what most people think it does That’s why I said local. I grew up in the country and lots of people had a few chickens. They run arou
by dkersten 7y ago
> free range doesn't mean what most people think it does
That’s why I said local. I grew up in the country and lots of people had a few chickens. They run around freely and are not “farmed”. They’re almost pets. They lay eggs all the time, so there’s nothing wrong with eating those eggs.
As for where the hens come from, this is how my parents got hens when they kept chickens a long time ago: go to your neighbour with a rooster and say “hey, neighbour, could I get some chicks next time you have some? Thanks”
> Free-range chicken eggs, however, have no legal definition in the United States
I don’t live in the US though.
> We bred chickens to lay eggs that often
Ok, but now that they do, what are we to do? Slaughter all the non-farmed free range chickens to find some wild ones? The damage is done, what’s wrong with giving them good lives and enjoying their abandoned eggs?
- seanwilson 7y ago- What do they do with the male chickens? About 50% of hatched eggs will be males. - Do they let the chickens live until they die of natural causes? Or do they kill them before this?
- thrower123 7y agoFor egg production, usually they are killed as chicks. This can be quite gruesome in the larger outfits, where they are sorted and the males run through essentially a woodchipper. If you have too many adult roosters running around, they act like assholes and start fighting, pecking eggs, and other nastiness, so you don't want to keep them. Meat chickens are usually mixed sex, as they are bred to grow so quickly that you slaughter them after only two or three months. Historically, people would castrate male chicks and raise them as capons for eating, but that's become rather niche.