In some countries brown eggs are more popular, but in Canada, and the United States, white eggs are more popular, and people often assume that brown eggs mean the hens were free range, but this is not always true.

photo brown hens in battery cages.

The term “Free-Range” is confusing enough, with different areas allowing different meanings, and it may not even mean the birds go outside for much of the day. Other terms have cropped up, barn roaming now applies to birds that are kept indoors, but not caged all the time. Cage-free means that the birds are not enclosed in small cages. In the US the term “free range” can apply if the birds are allowed outside only for a short time, but most people are given to assume it applies to birds that are outside for the day. We should note that even most farmers put hens indoors for roosting at night.

Authors hens.

These birds in large egg production farms are fed a ration, and rarely eat grass, or anything other than their specific ration, this applies even if they are labeled “free range”. If you took a few hens from these situations and gave them a different diet, one that included natural foods, the shell of the egg stays the same color, but the yolk is usually darker. As such you may find eggs from farmers markets contain darker yolks, or light ones, depending on the diet of the bird. In fact most factory farms add yellow dye to the diet of hens to try to make the yolks a bit darker.

Although what determines eggs color is more complicated then this, generally white hens lay white eggs and brown hens lay brown eggs. A person should never assume that the hen was treated humanely or fed well, but the look of the egg, it is the yolk which can be a determining factor, darker yolks tend to come from “real” free range birds, ones where the owner lets the birds out in the day.

Again – note that free range generally does not always mean that hens are kept loose in the way I keep mine, sometimes they are just loose in a crowded barn.  If you want cruelty free eggs, look for ones from a farmer you know and trust, or ones labeled “Organic“.  Since the birds are on a better diet, the eggs from them are better for you to eat, and you know you have not contributed to cruelty.

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Battery hens live in tiny cages, they may lay one egg a day.  Laying eggs is about all they have to do, besides eating, drinking, and competing for space with the other one or two birds in a cage that may be smaller than a the space under a kitchen chair. This is how they live for months until they are slaughtered.

Picture of Battery hens, this is where most store bought eggs come from.

When you waste eggs you contribute to the suffering of chickens and have not shown those poor animals the respect they deserve.

Having kept hens I know these birds are far more intelligent than we give them credit for, yet in the livestock industry they are often put three to a cage; in a cage smaller than would be used for a pet guinea pig.

Hens produce eggs naturally but that does not give us the right to waste them by tossing them at somebody’s house or car. A hen suffered to create that egg, people should not be so callous to waste it. I feel a lot of suffering can be reduced if people simply did not waste food in the way we do now. If you bought eggs do not forget to use them and throw them out later. They last for months (longer than the date suggested), and should be used rather than wasted. This applies to all animal products we buy as food. Do not waste it by forgetting to cook it and eat it, this only adds to suffering.

If possible I encourage people to buy free range, or cage free, eggs but even these are somewhat cruel. The main thing is not to waste eggs, consume them, or do not buy them at all.

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Look at the source of your food

Ensuring the best possible conditions for the animals, and ensuring the welfare of a species as a whole, is important. If you’re buying eggs, always buy free range and if you can find it, buy free-range meat and milk too. If you’re buying fish, look for sustainably sourced or farm-reared fish, as it will have less of an impact on the eco-system of the oceans. Farmed fish are still fed young, wild fish at a rate that isn’t sustainable, so try to limit how regularly you buy it!

Buy less, waste less

Most people in the Western world eat more than they need, so cutting down is often possible. Otherwise, try your best to limit waste by buying what you need. Try doing smaller shopping trips more regularly. Another great way to stop others from wasting food is to buy “reduced” foodstuffs that supermarkets are selling off when they’re close to their sell-by date. If you’re feeling really adventurous, try “freeganism” and have a look at the industrial bins outside your local supermarket. Laws on use-by dates mean that supermarkets often throw away perfectly good, edible food. Just be careful if you’re dumpster-diving to check any food you find before eating it!

Look for less packaging

Most household waste comes from food packaging, so try to choose foodstuffs that have less packaging or packing that can be recycled.

Eat fresh!

Processed food takes more energy, water and resources to make than fresh, raw foods. So make your own meals wherever possible, avoid ready-meals when you have the time, and bulk out meals with vegetables rather than dried rice or pasta, or expensive meat.

Have a meat-free day

Try having a day without meat once a week. A “meat-free Monday”, if you like. Whatever your thoughts are on the ethics of eating meat, raising animals for slaughter uses a lot of energy and resources, as does transporting them. Plus, meat is often packaged in large plastic trays or bags. So having one day a week without meat will mount up over time to saving a lot of energy and waste.

Buy differently, save waste

Many butchers and meat-selling companies also sell off-cuts and trims from bacon, ham, and even smoked salmon! Buying trims saves waste and is often a lot cheaper. This way you can save money and still get a tasty treat. It may not always look as neat, but it still tastes great!

Think about eating as much of an animal as you can too. If you develop a taste for heart, liver, or kidneys, you’ll find they’re fairly cheap, highly nutritious and easy to work into tasty meals.

Know your Cause

Suppose I want to educate people on why chickens should be allowed as pets in a city. I need to know all problems associated with keeping chickens, ways around those problems, which breeds are best, and tips on how to actually keep chickens as pets. It is also a good idea to know why laws are in place the other way.

Timing is Helpful

Although there may not always be a news story you can leapfrog your letter off of, if something does come up then you should use it and get your letter out right away. For example there was a time when my local newspaper ran a story about a dog who had been lost and turned up a year later in good condition. I used this to write about how it is important to have your pet wear identification, and that if you find a pet you need to report it to the animal shelter rather than assuming it was unwanted, because clearly somebody had been caring for the dog for the year it was missing.

Image by garlandcannon via Flickr

Keep it Simple

Short letters, but ones that are clear and to the point, stand the best chance of getting published. If you ramble on too long chances are your letter will not get published. Four paragraphs should be enough in most cases, sometimes three is fine. Most newspapers actually print guidelines for how to write a letter, including a word maximum.

Your first paragraph needs to explain the issue, your second needs to get more involved, as does your third, and your fourth needs to wrap it up and tell people what they can do further, such as telling them who to write to in order to effect a change in the laws.

Be Professional

Newspapers require you to include your name, address, and phone number, although they only print your name. You can request your name be withheld if dealing with a sensitive issue in which you are concerned about retaliation.

Do not make personal attacks and do not slander. Use proper grammar and maybe have somebody else proof read your letter to be sure they understand it before it goes to print and is at the risk of being misunderstood.

If you are too extreme in your letter it will turn people off and they will not support your activist cause and may not even have your letter published at all by the newspaper.

Read the Newspapers

After your letter has been published follow be aware that others might write letters stating their view and opinion. You can write again “in response to” and hope the newspaper prints your follow up letter, but keep it short and address only the points mentioned. Getting into a fight with another reader/writer is generally not a good idea and will not help your cause.

Please use the Comments area below to share any tips for other Activists or to tell about a letter you had published.

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A few years down the track and i started to breed, see my other story Three babies in 10 months. The environment started to matter more, my children’s future and the fact that we entered the worst drought we had ever had . see my story on the drought that won’t end.

As my family grew we sold up and bought a larger house, old and in need of total renovation. It ran on a wood fire and oil heater. It was a dark and cold house and totally run down. We set about getting insulation and taking out the fireplace (we had babies and the brick surrounding was just plain dangerous to their little wobbly heads). We got rid of the oil heater and installed ducted gas. I am not sure that this was a green movement but it was 5 star energy rated so i went with it.

Next came a water heater, the one i chose was a Quantum Water heat pump. The idea behind these guys is they draw the heat from the air and virtually heat your water for very little money. They cost a whole heap but the Government did give a rebate. But my green movement was in motion.

The next thing i did was sign up for green electricity. My partner is still out on that as to him it was useless..”your just giving them more money, your not getting green electricity”. I knew this but the energy company promised to buy the same amount of electricity i used from a renewable energy producer so i was contributing in some way.

In went the skylights to lighten the house, save on lighting. In went the long life energy bulbs although i still have to say i hate them, they take forever to lighten up, their dangerous if you break them and they give off a supermarket lighting effect. I don’t care if they paint them orange on the outside to make them “warm”, i miss my incandescents. I hear led’s are the way to go so i might go that way.

My next project is we are getting a solar energy system on the roof. 12 panels generating 2kw which should take care of most of our energy needs. The Government is giving us $8000 rebate which takes care of most of it and is also promising to buy the electricity back at 4 times the rate we pay for it. Brad is all systems go for that .

Image via Wikipedia

And to top it off we have just purchased a chook house and run from EBay.. woohoo. Now we just have to convince the dogs to be nice. I figure i hate caged hen eggs, i buy the free range stuff but i am not convinced they are, as their yolks are pale yellow and don’t hold well. When i can, i have bought from farms and know what a free range looks like. So we are going to put the chooks to good use. And they can recycle our leftovers also.

The way I’m going the next thing i will be building a mud brick house!!!!

image source

First off, lets look at a few eggs. The difference in color of shells pretty much only indicates different breeds of birds that laid them, the color does not indicate any health value of the egg, nor does it indicate if the hen was a “free range” bird or battery bird.  Consumers seem to want white eggs, so this is what the industry caters too as such battery hens are white birds, that lay white eggs.  Myself, I am happier with free range eggs and the color does not matter (as a note, most brown hens lay brown eggs, some breeds lay blue or green eggs).

image source

These are my own birds, free range in the day, and penned up at night for their own safety from predators. We fed them a proper laying ration and get at least one egg per bird every day (excluding winter when they slow down or stop laying). While they were out they munched grass, dandelions, and bugs. This article is not debating free range vs battery hens, but you will note, that in neither situation is a rooster needs to be involved.

That is right, generally no roosters are used in the production of eggs for eating. Hens lay eggs no matter what. Their bodies naturally produce eggs and they get too big and must come out. We see if there is no rooster, the egg is not fertile, so cannot be considered an “abortion”. Even if it was fertile, this is the natural process of chicken reproduction, so equally could not be considered an “abortion”.  To read more about how an egg is formed inside then hen click here.

Some people resort to referring to chicken eggs as their “period”, another laughable proposal. Chickens, and birds in general, don’t get periods. A human females period is part of her monthly cycle. In a woman her uterus builds up a “wall” in case she becomes pregnant, this wall is what is shed during her period, which occurs usually two weeks after she is fertile, so totally impossible for the egg to be the same thing in this case either.

image source

Now supposing, you wanted a chick, you would have to have a rooster and hen. They would both have to be mature enough for reproduction, usually about 5 or 6 months. While all hens will lay eggs, not all hens will want to sit on them. Eggs must be kept warm or will not hatch. Eggs collected daily in the mornings and put into the refrigerator will not develop, and will never hatch, even if they were fertilized. So the argument that you are eating a “fetus” is also not worthy of any attention, because, even if the farm has a rooster, the eggs are usually collected within hours of being laid, far too soon for a “fetus” to form.

Most of these tactics are used by people to discourage them from eating eggs, as part of an animal rights agenda. Theoretically though, if they are not eating eggs for protein, they are probably eating some other animal that was slaughtered for meat. Thereby negating any positive attempt to end cruelty.

I support free range hens, and keepers of real free range birds (let us not get into what free range can mean, what it does mean, and what it should mean, you all know what I am talking about). I do not support people who spread misinformation to turn people off of something.

The egg, and chick photos are from Wikimedia, the other is my own.

*To clarify, if you eat a fertilized egg, that was incubated for a period of time, it might contain a fetus, but remember, in most laying farms – there is no rooster with the hens, so this generally is not a concern.

Related Links

Why Are My Chickens Eggs Not Hatching

How Eggs are Formed

Unusual Pets:  Chickens

Benefits of Free Range Eggs

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image source

The Poor Unborn Baby Chicks

Not every egg is destined to be a chick. If there are no roosters present, the egg will not be fertilized, and therefore will not contain the makings of a baby chicken. Some breeds of chickens lay more eggs than others. Many of these “laying” breeds will not sit on their eggs, as such even if they had a rooster in the pen with them, they would never keep the egg warm enough for it to live and develop into a chick. As such the argument of not eating baby chicks is moot.

The Truth about Soy

There is a very good chance that more animals suffer in the growing and production of Soy than in the free range egg production industry. Animals are displaced in order to have fields of soy, and are kept out. Pesticides are used to kill insects, which intern kills the mice and birds who prey on those insects. Other animals are poisoned to keep them out of the crops, rabbits, for example are not welcome. Deer are not exactly welcome either. In fact soy producers really don’t want any animals on the land while the soy beans are growing. This loss of habitat is indisputably cruel and should not be disregarded simply because an animal is wild.

Save a Hen, Eat an Egg

Free Range means different things to different people, to me I think of hens that are not in tiny cages, who have shelter but are allowed outdoors to run freely, even within an enclosed safe pen. In some areas pens are truly necessary or the hens would be easy prey to foxes, coyotes, snakes, and birds of prey. In many places people can actually have their own pet chickens for egg production, this is the ideal. I would suggest keeping three to six birds for a family.

Chicken breeds should be selected according to productivity and friendliness. If you keep your own hens then you are saving other hens from battery situations. Ideally you may want to have more eggs than you can eat, and can share them with other people, thus reducing the number of eggs they buy from battery situations.

Battery Situations?

I probably should explain what a hen battery is. It may be called different things in different countries, but typically a battery is rows and rows of tiny wire cages where hens are warehoused. The birds who enter this system are sexed at one day old, females get vaccinated and “debeaked”, in other words, their beaks are cut off to prevent them from pecking each other due to the upcoming stressful, and boring, caging situation they are about to enter.

The cages are often only slightly larger than the two or three hens put into them, alongside others. The eggs are automatically rolled away from the hens, not even allowing a proud mother to sit on the egg and cluck proudly about it. These are really terrible situations and undoubtedly a good reason not to eat eggs, or chickens for that matter.

Do the Math

The math adds up to the fact that eating some eggs actually reduces suffering of other animals, both wild, and domestic. Fresh free range eggs are also healthier than store bought battery hen eggs, so you can improve on the health angle too if you want to go that route.

So… if you are going to eat meat, or eggs, make it free range eggs, and nothing else.

Eating meat is bad for you

This is a miserable argument because it refuses to take into account American over-eating. Yes, if people stuff their faces with huge, frequent portions of meat, they will have horrible problems with their organ systems, including cholesterol increases and rising body fat percentages. If people eat modest portions of meat once every other day, there are no horrible health impacts and you have access to a fantastic source of raw materials necessary for your body. Except for fish. Fish is great for you. Eat lots of fish. Fish is still a form of meat.

The counterargument to this is claiming that eating meat dumps massive amounts of harmful chemicals, antibiotics, and even concentrated amounts of chemicals into your body. This is typically paired with slideshows of animals in horrible conditions, fifteen to a cage in a room full of five hundred cages, all full of chickens with two heads. Everyone seems to recognize this, but I’ll give you a hint. The solution is not veganism.

If you want to combat or even just avoid the mass farming of meat (including fish farms), buy free-range and organic meat. Animals raised by the standards of these two labels grow up in much better conditions and are not stuffed full of growth hormones and antibiotics. The price tag will help you keep in step with the portions suggested above. The meat tastes better, it’s much healthier, and you are supporting a fight against polluted meat raised in miserable conditions. Better than depriving the growing industry from a source of income by not eating meat at all.

This is a huge issue, especially when it comes to fish, as fish farming programs typically do not address the dangerous buildup of chemicals in their stocks. Buying wild fish will help encourage the strength of those programs and their ability to ensure the continued protection of their territories. Clean waters, for example, are necessary for the raising of healthy fish. Supporting the budding wild fish industry will both encourage competitors to clean up their acts and may even begin the expansion of the industry into over fished areas. Wouldn’t it be great if a company decided to clean up an area like the Chesapeake Bay for the purpose of raising a healthy fish and shellfish population? Supporting the wild fish industry will ultimately help rejuvenate rich coastal areas, under the protection of companies with the health of the area in the interests of their consumers.

Also, if the chemical/antibiotics /hormone issue is the reason you switched to veganism, you’d better buy organic plants. Otherwise, you’re still likely to have pesticides and antibiotics dumped into your system, as well as the issue of genetically modified organisms to confront.

The Doozy

Eating meat is immoral and/or unnatural. What a terrible argument to put on a brochure. The argument from immorality is underplayed by vegans- it would certainly take up the entire brochure, and follows a long train of logic that many people would find conflict with. In short, most mainstream modern religions don’t support the argument from veganism.

The argument from unnaturalism has always bugged me. At eight, I would open my mouth and point frantically at my canine teeth in response. Humans are omnivores. Meat tastes particularly good to us because it helped us to keep our populations high, as it is a source of much sought after fats, proteins and certain vitamins. You just couldn’t get that from plants when we were evolving. We’re conditioned to eat meat by our very genetics. And you know what we ate most of the time? That’s right. Plants. We ate plants most of the time, supplemented by scavenged meat, at a rate above our ancestors, the chimpanzees. Probably in the proportions suggested in part one. And it kept us alive.

In Short

The right types of meat, in the right proportions, are a fantastic asset to your health. Humans have been conditioned by the process of evolution to benefit from meat in these proportions. If you want to make a difference in the meat industry, don’t boycott it. Support the industries that address your concerns, and you’ll help them grow to confront the industries to which you are opposed.