Life of an Egg Survey

[CandoAviary]

I am a pro life individual. I am curious as to peoples opinions about the life of an egg.
I believe that a fertilized egg has life the moment that it is laid.
I reason this by the fact that up until around 7 days stored and then incubated the egg will still have a chance to hatch. After the eggs are stored longer than that they are considered dead or nonviable. So there must be life in that newly hatched egg.... what do you guys think?

[lovemyfinch]

I am also pro life Canadace, but I do have to say with my past experience I have learned the hard way to never count your finches until they have hatched.

[cindy]

Hi...I am pro life also. I have a thought: could the egg be considered "a life" before it is even laid? Providing that the hen is carrying a fertile egg, that embryo is alive as the egg develops inside the mom.

[L in Ontario]

I believe the embryo within the eggs only gets an actual heart beat after having been incubated for a minimum of 5 days. That's when I think it is 'alive'... after having been incubated for 5 days and you candle it to see actual veins within the egg.

[CandoAviary]

Cindy,
Yes, I agree. I just thought for the survey that it would be simpler to just deal with the egg already visable.
I know lots of breeders toss/cull eggs when not wanted or see them as not alive until they can candle them and see something. I don't second guess thier practices but I have just never been able to just toss eggs. I don't give up on them until they do. In fact I bought societies as fosters...3 males and 1 female. I have 3 gouldians under them and in the other nest in the cage are the new society chicks..... I just could not bring myself to through them out. I will just set up some other societies and then seperate the females so as to not end up with too many.

[cindy]

Yes, I thought that too but figured for the survey that it would be simpler to just deal with the egg already visable.
I know lots of breeders toss/cull eggs when not wanted or see them as not alive until they can candle them and see something. I don't second guess thier practices but I have just never been able to just toss eggs. I don't give up on them until they do. In fact I bought societies as fosters...3 males and 1 female. I have 3 gouldians under them and in the other nest in the cage are the new society chicks..... I just could not bring myself to through them out. I will just set up some other societies and then seperate the females so as to not end up with too many.

........................................................................................

I am on the same page with you about not tossing out eggs. When I was looking into getting owls a few people adviced getting a foster couple "just in case", let them go to nest and lay eggs about the same time as the owls. They said pitch the foster's eggs and put the owl eggs under them. I hated the thought of a little baby chick in an egg that was vialble ending up in the trash.

I never got fosters, instead I set my owls up in one of our quieter rooms and try hard not to bother them much, if they produce I will feel blessed, if not I will still love them...they are one of my favorite species.

My husband, the scientist came up with the "alive before laid" theory/suggestion...I just typed it for him!

[Ursula]

I am also pro-life and actually agree with Cindy's husband. The egg is fertile before it is laid and could already be considered alive.

However, I have to admit that I collected my button quails' eggs regularly because otherwise I would have been run over with little buttons. (Right now I only have 1 female and she's separated from the males, so I don't have that problem anymore.) I did not toss them but hard boiled them and fed them to the birds, so they had some purpose...

But I have to add a provocative question: Do you not eat chicken eggs? Some of them should also be fertile, especially if you get them from free roaming chickens...

Mentally I'd like to be vegan but I have to admit that I like eggs and meat and therefore am not.

[cindy]

Well here's a good one...I am allergic to eggs! No guilt here, can't eat them. Would love to go vegan also, not sure the rest of the family would like it. I have snuck tofu in a few things!!!

My husband brings home eggs from his sentinal chickens for me to make egg food for the finches. He uses all females so nothing is fertile...thank goodness.

[CandoAviary]

Oh yes, I do eat eggs. I also boil chicken eggs for my finches and they eat them too. I guess since I buy them in a refridgerated state I assume they are dead already. Dead eggs don't bother me...now if I was having to gather the eggs from under my own chicken hens..... well that would probably bother me... I guess because once I started caring for that hen things change. It goes from simply a foodsource to a pet On the commune we all got a pig to eat the refuge from our crops and then we thought we would have a pig roast..... never happened. Matilda grew to the biggest sweetest pig you ever saw. She became one of the favorite pets among everyone. We all ate a lot of vegatables and brown rice.

[Domenic]

Pro-life here also, and I consider things to be alive the second their DNA is figured out for them. I definitely would have a problem throwing away fertile eggs, everything deserves a chance.

[mike]

Mentally I'd like to be vegan but I have to admit that I like eggs and meat and therefore am not.

That's like saying, "I want to stop robbing banks but I like the money."
If you want to be vegan, I can help you get there but you need to have a strong mind/stomach or the ability to understand why eating animals is sad/gross without actually seeing how your animals are "processed".
Or type "Earthlings" into Google and watch. It's a real treat! Wait until you get to the part with the fox. That one haunted me for months.

Yes I'd say an egg is alive before it's delivered. Once you get a zygote, you got a life.

[Ursula]

I know it's lying to myself, Mike! I'm the same as Candace who eats eggs and meat if it's already dead when she gets it. I could never eat an animal either that I knew personally when it was alive, let alone kill one myself. (Yes, I do kill insects when they bite me or get into my kitchen... Same thing, actually.)

My daughter is vegetarian. She decided to not eat meat anymore when she was about 13 or 14 and still doesn't eat it over 10 years later. She is the only one in the family and now married to a man who eats meat and has a little daughter who is not raised vegetarian either. I always admired her willpower!

Bottom line: I don't think I want to do it, otherwise I would have done it already.

I edit this post: I did google Earthlings after posting the above and I guess you mean the movie, Mike. Right? I started watching it on Youtube but it's too long for now... I will watch it later though, I promise!

Second edit: I forgot to mention that I knew a girl (we lost touch years ago) who was studying to become a vet (which she is now, I believe). She turned vegetarian when she worked at an animal facility where pigs were slaughtered. I believe she did that for her studies, they do have inspections by vets etc. Don't know the details... Anyway: She said she is 100% sure that the pigs know what's happening to them there, and where she was they did NOT torture them there or treat them badly. But somehow they seemed to know what was going on and that they were supposed to die, and were panicking... She said after that experience she never ate meat again!

I hope all this is not getting too far off topic from the original question of this post, but I think it's an interesting question. We're all animal lovers here on this board, but how many of us are vegetarians?

[mike]

I edit this post: I did google Earthlings after posting the above and I guess you mean the movie, Mike. Right? I started watching it on Youtube but it's too long for now... I will watch it later though, I promise!

If you can get through even part of the video I give you a lot of credit. It is probably one of the most disturbing videos I've ever seen wrt animals and I will never watch it again, not even parts.

[DVBourassa]

But I have to add a provocative question: Do you not eat chicken eggs? Some of them should also be fertile, especially if you get them from free roaming chickens...

Any eggs you get at the grocery store (at least in the U.S.) won't be fertile, even if they're free range, since the entire flock is female. Now if you're getting eggs from your backyard from a mixed flock they could certainly be fertile.

Balut is an asian delicacy where they eat the eggs with the chick inside. Don't google it, the pictures made me shudder.

[nixity]

Most people don't give pigs much credit because historically they are seen as filthy bottom feeder type animals.

But they are actually exquisitely intelligent - similar to dogs.