An egg weights about 60g in average, and a hen 3kg, how the hen can produce every day something about 2% of it’s weight like this? Which kind of metabolism the hen have to achieve this?
In: 32
We’ve selectively bred them to produce eggs daily for about a year, when they are killed for cheap meat or pet food. If they aren’t killed because they’re no longer economically beneficial (their egg laying rate drops off) they often die prematurely due to bone density problems because calcium is diverted from the bones to the eggs, or cancers of the reproductive system due to their supercharged hormonal cycles. Many rescue centres actually administer hormonal contraceptives to their chickens to protect against this. Naturally domestic chickens can live for about 5 to 10 years, but commercial egg layers are typically killed at 1 year when their bodies are worn out.
They do have to eat a lot to sustain this, part of the reasons eggs are so expensive is that their feed prices have increased a lot lately too, and as they eat so much it has a big knock on effect on the egg prices.
tl;dr, yes it’s very physically exhausting to them, it literally kills them.
Latest Answers