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Comment by deepvibrations | Hacker News Reader

I also wondered this: Us humans bred them over thousands of years so that they keep laying eggs throughout the year rather than just during the breeding season, to the point that they lay them every single day. The original ancestor - Red Jungle fowl may have laid 6-12 eggs per year in the wild. Hence the 'happy hens' may not be as happy as their ancestors due to an uncomfortable period on a daily basis when they lay. Of course they may well be happy outside of this, but it may not be as glamorous life as it seems from the outside! Worth adding that their lifespan is also greatly reduced due to the stresses of laying everyday.

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Well, modern hybrid commercial laying hens lay an egg every day from when they come into lay for about a year, then it goes to one every other day, and so they get culled by farmers. Their laying is also extended by artificial light, otherwise they won't lay during the very shortest days in the winter.

Pedigree hens lay about once every other day, and can live up to eight years.

Yeah, but they get to be alive. That would not be the case if they weren’t useful to humans.

In a vegan world, wouldn't there be more wild animals?

Think about how different this could look: https://xkcd.com/1338/

A couple of things:

1. Those particular animals would not be alive. I was replying to a comment about the quality of life of those particular animals.

2. Regarding the point that other animals would take their place: isn’t this an argument against veganism? Life in a state of nature is brutal and not at all what I would classify as clearly better than life under domestication.

Yes, you could say that providing those animals have a good life, there is an argument there. However, whilst the eggs from your own hens might be ethical, in reality, probably 95%+ of chickens are factory farmed and have pretty awful lives, in which cases their life is not so much of a gift.

As a (probably controversial) counterpoint, I'm not so sure that life in a state of nature is much better than life on a factory farm. The math of making it in the natural world is brutal: a stable population size means that, on average, only two of the offspring that an animal produces will ever become reproductive adults. You know that cute string of ducklings following their mother around? Statisticaly speaking, almost every one of them will be mauled, starved, or frozen to death.

That being said, I still believe that we have some kind of a moral obligation to provide the animals in our care with a decent quality of life.

2. I can't speak for other animals, but I can speak for myself: there's no way I would prefer to be locked up in a cage or a farm (where I will be killed and eaten, probably way before my natural lifespan) than to be free to live a natural life and be killed by predators.

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