veganbroad:

Backyard farms contribute to the deaths of millions of chickens every year. This is why:

1. Most backyard farms buy from feed stores. Feed stores buy their chicks from the same hatcheries that factory farms buy from.  Hatcheries are very evil places, and farmers directly support them when they buy chickens from feed stores.

At the hatchery:

Chicks are incubated, born, sexed, and sent to factory farms. The female chicks will be sent to feed stores and factory farms to produce eggs for the remainder of their sad lives. HOWEVER, the males have absolutely no value to the industry. They can’t produce eggs. Their bodies aren’t big enough to produce “adequate” meat. They’re seen as worthless. They will either be thrown away like garbage or ground alive in macerators and used for fertilizer and/or livestock feed. There are millions of male chicks killed this way every year. 

Another point to consider: a great deal of the time the workers who sex the chicks at hatcheries make mistakes. Males will frequently get sorted as females and sent to feed stores. Then these farmers have a bunch of roosters that they can’t use, and will usually end up slaughtering. 

2. Also consider how long chickens can produce eggs for. Chickens used for egg production in factory farms will be considered “spent” after 18 months. After that time their tired bodies cannot produce at the rate that they used to. The same goes for chickens in backyard farm operations. Think about what this means for the backyard farmer. Every year and a half he has a chicken coop full of chickens that produce very few eggs. It’s not very economical of him to keep these “useless” chickens around. The obvious answer is to slaughter the chickens and buy more. Is this keeping the chickens’ best interest in mind? No. 

3. Egg-laying chickens have abundant health problems since they’ve been selectively bred to be little egg-producing machines. 

Here are just of the many problems they can suffer from, both in factory farms and backyard farm operations:

-Egg-binding disease: when a chicken literally cannot pass an egg. It becomes stuck in her uterus. 

-Uterine prolapse: when the uterus of a chicken literally comes out of her body from the constant egg laying. This can happen even if she’s not at her height of production, and will most likely bother her for all of her life. 

-Osteoporosis: Chickens will use a good portion of calcium to create in egg. Their bones become brittle and will break very easily during the entirety of their egg production. How can you combat this? FEED THEIR EGGS BACK TO THEM. They love it. I’ve seen it myself many times.

4. MOST IMPORTANTLY no matter how you look at it, you’re using the bodies and secretions of animals for your own benefit. Do you think chickens want you to eat their eggs? What if your sole purpose in life was to cater to another species? Chickens have their own lives and personalities that have absolutely nothing to do with what we humans eat. It’s not ethical or necessary to eat eggs, no matter where they came from, and even if you do “know a guy.”

(via veganchickadee)