Backyard chicken keeping, while seemingly a kinder alternative to commercial egg production, often replicates the same ethical and practical issues on a smaller scale.
All chickens on egg farms are hens? Billions of them worldwide. All chicks that hatch from fertilized eggs are 50% female and 50% male. But where are all the roosters?
'Revolutionary' technologies like in-ovo sexing are hailed as solutions to ethical concerns in the egg industry. But the elimination of male chick culling does little to address the inherent ethical dilemmas of egg production.
