Why Don't Vegans Eat Backyard Eggs

it’s important to recognise that hens wouldn’t naturally lay 300 or more eggs a year, but have instead been selectively bred to do so. Wild red jungle fowl, the ancestor of the modern day egg laying hen, only produce around 10 - 15 eggs a year and will lay in clutches, rather than producing eggs on an almost daily basis. This means we have bred these animals to produce up to 30 times more eggs than they are naturally designed to do so.

This takes a huge toll on their bodies, especially as it also depletes a lot of vitamins and minerals, including calcium, which is taken from their bodies to produce the egg shell. This is one of the reasons why osteoporosis and broken bones are such a huge issue within commercial egg farms, with it being reported that as many as 86% of egg laying hens in the UK suffer a fracture.

However, this loss of nutrients can also have an impact on backyard hens, with egg binding being an issue where an egg becomes physically stuck inside the hen, which can ultimately lead to the hen dying.

This is why one of the best ways to protect hens from nutrient deficiencies and health problems is to feed their eggs back to them, which will help the hens replace their lost nutrients, and they also really enjoy it.

This really highlights the wider problem of backyard eggs, the intention of why someone has hens in the first place. If the intention of having hens is only because you want the eggs, then that means we are viewing the hen as a resource and viewing their worth of life as being dependent on what they produce for us. This is why it can be seen as normal to kill a hen because they are eating their own eggs, as it means that they are no longer seen as being worthy of life, simply because we can’t take their eggs. In effect, we deny them their autonomy.

So ultimately, the most ethical way to look after backyard hens is a way that provides them the best opportunity to live a long, healthy and happy life, and by taking their eggs we compromise that, meaning that taking their eggs is less ethical than feeding them back, or taking safe steps to reduce the number of eggs they produce in the first place.