Well, if you want to think of it in a way that may make you not want to eat eggs ... it's basically like the human femaile menstrual cycle, just more often! Release an ovum, doesn't get used, get's expelled.
As you can see, I've been thinking my way through this. Getting informed, and forming my opinions as I go along, as opposed to operating by and defending some past position. And this is the position on this that this discussion, in this thread, has led me to:
I'm perfectly fine with eating eggs if I had access to eggs from a small chicken-breeder, like you and
@novaphile, who deal strictly in rescue chickens, and treat them fully humanely, and also give them a fully secure "retirement" in the years remaining to them after they stop laying. However, I'm not really in a position to (or, to be more precisely honest, not really willing to put in the effort to) bring up chickens myself. And buying eggs from the market, even if those eggs came from a commercial farm that deals in rescues and treats its hens humanely throughout their life, is still not something I'm comfortable with, given the after-market factor you yourself brought into the discussion, given that at commercial scales it becomes fully relevant, as it is not at smaller scales like yours.
...And yes, I'm aware of the double standards here, as I type this out. Not eating sentient creatures slaughtered to please my palate and maybe keep me healthy, that is one thing. But this quibbling about after-markets, in order to be consistent, should surely lead me to also stay away from diary as well: and yet I'm not doing that now, and don't plan to immediately start doing that. ...I acknowledge those double standards: but I don't see a comfortable resolution to those double standards in loosening those standards for eggs. I'll either live with those double standards, with clear knowledge of what I'm doing; or, hopefully, going forward resolve that inconsistency by giving up dairy as well.
...And again, it's cool what you're doing. As you can see from my somewhat involved post so far, I can see no reason
for me not to eat eggs sourced the way you source them (assuming your egg consumption is limited to just what you yourself get from your own hens). It's very cool that you're going to all this trouble to give rescue chickens a home and a good life.
Chickens lay eggs so often because that's what we've bred them to do. "Wild" equivalents, like wild red junglefowl - the ancestors to our domestic chickens - typically lay a clutch of 8 or so eggs over 1-2 weeks in spring.
ok, right. Yep, got to know some interesting things about hens and chickens and eggs in this thread! Including, for instance, the "pottery eggs" that
@SteveAitch brought up, and afterwards you as well. And of course, most importantly the fact that hens
always lay eggs, as you say more like human (female) menstrual cycle eggs rather than human fetuses --- and unlike cows, that have to be actively manipulated in order to get them to produce milk. That's a pretty basic thing that I hadn't been aware of!
