Some months ago, there was a discussion in my home and on the site about whether it is appropriate to give chickens eggs to eat. Many people responding were mildly horrified, suggesting that feeding eggs to chickens was a form of cannibalism and was not appropriate. We’re not having that discussion anymore. The chickens gets eggs several times a week – eggs are good for them, and for their coats, and this is preferable to throwing them out. I learn a lot from the animals, especially when I focus on my belief that they do not think like us, and are not like us.

I don’t know anyone who lives on a farm that would give a second thought to feeding chickens their own eggs. Chickens are elemental creatures. Every night when it gets dark they hop up onto their roosts, the highest spot they can find. Is this because they are sentient like us? Because they intellectually understand that predators might come and eat them? I do not believe so. I think it is because their simple but very powerful instincts propel them to seek higher ground when it gets dark, a very basic and Darwinian instinct that has evolved over time (like dogs reading our moods). Keeps a lot of chickens alive as there would be few chickens if they slept on the ground.

Chickens will eat just about anything they can handle, and they don’t make moral decisions or have moral responses. Another reason  for me to resist putting my thoughts and emotions into their heads and consciousness. Chicken lesson.