Is it painful for chickens to lay eggs?

Is it painful for chickens to lay eggs?

It is probably not painful or not very painful for chickens to lay eggs... most of the time.

The reason it is hard to answer this question with complete clarity is because, of course, chickens cannot tell us for sure whether they're experiencing pain when laying eggs. There are some signs, but we have to be careful not to misread them. For example, for a long time humans (including that first century Roman writer, Columella) believed that the sound many chickens make before laying indicated pain. However, studies found that the sound was instead an "egg song," which could have a number of explanations, including happiness and scaring off predators. Another study found that when a hen "sings" it is more likely to be associated with contentment, while cackling aligns with danger. 

The good news is that most experts believe it is usually not painful for a chicken to lay eggs. Others believe it may be a little uncomfortable, without being anywhere close to the pain other animals (including humans) experience during childbirth. However, there are exceptions!

If a chicken is young and laying eggs for the first time, she may experience some pain while she gets used to laying. Similarly, if an egg is particularly large, chickens may experience pain while laying. A range of factors affect both a chicken's pain and comfort while laying.

Anatomy and psychology of egg-laying hens

Chickens are thoughtful and emotional creatures, with more intelligence than they're given credit for: they can even do arithmetic! Laying is a biological urge for many hens, but it also seems to be one that brings them contentment and calm, particularly when a hen is "broody" (deciding she wants to hatch her eggs and sitting on the eggs for an extended period of time). During this time, she might even chirp to her eggs to communicate (and they'll chirp back!). Laying eggs is natural for chickens, so psychologically they are usually pretty calm about the whole process. In fact, if a chicken is stressed or unhappy, she's less likely to lay eggs.

The main reason that laying eggs is mostly painless for chickens is because of their reproductive organs, which are very different from other animals.

The process of egg formation in chickens

An egg begins its journey in a chicken's ovary, and it starts off as just a yolk. When the yolk is created, the hen ejects it into the first part of her oviduct, which is called the infundibulum. This is an important stage because it's here that the egg gets fertilized, if the hen has mated with a rooster. If she has, the yolk is fertilized; if not, it is an unfertilized egg that the hen can still lay but will never hatch into a chick. 

Fertilized or not, the next stop for the egg is the hen's magnum, which is also part of her oviduct. Here, the egg yolk gains its egg white (also called an albumen). It only takes roughly three hours for the egg white to develop, and then the egg moves onto the isthmus, another part of the oviduct, where the inner and outer shell membranes form. From there it's into the chicken's uterus, where the egg stays for 18 to 24 hours until its hard outer shell is fully developed. The whole gestation process takes only about 26 hours, and the movement along the reproductive tract is smooth enough that a hen usually won't feel much pain, even as her muscles contract to help the egg along.

Now our chicken's big moment has come: it's time for her to lay her egg! Again, this is a much simpler and more comfortable procedure than for many animals. The chicken lays her egg through a passage called the cloaca (or vent). The spherical shape of the egg and the relativity of its size to the size of the chicken's cloaca make it unlikely to hurt much, if at all, and the process itself takes only a few minutes in its final stages.

How to tell if a chicken is in pain

While some believe the "egg song" indicates pain, others think it might be a sign of contentment, pride, communication to the rest of the flock, or even an attempt to confuse predators! But there are definitely other methods beyond the egg song to tell if a chicken is in pain as she lays her eggs.

Physical and behavioral signs

A chicken experiencing pain while she lays eggs will exhibit physical and behavioral signs to tip you off. These include wheezing, distressed squawks, stopping eating or drinking, staying away from other chickens, hunching over, drooping, avoiding movement or activity, or slow or awkward movements. Sometimes you may find some blood around the chicken's cloaca or where she was sitting, indicating a painful laying. 

Less frequent but still possible is a mishap with the egg itself as it moves through the chicken's reproductive tract. If an egg breaks or becomes "stuck" (egg-bound) inside a chicken, it can cause her severe pain and discomfort. This is effectively a medical emergency for a chicken and requires intervention and treatment.

Finally, one frightening and painful consequence of laying which hens experience is a keel bone fracture. This happens when farming practices force hens to lay many more eggs than is natural for her, and when the large size of the eggs cause painful bone fractures. Assistant Professor Ida Thøfner found that, in Denmark, around 85% of laying hens experience these fractures, regardless of whether the hens are kept in cages or are organic, barn, or free-range chickens. "These animals suffer, both when the fracture occurs and afterwards, so we are dealing with a huge animal welfare problem here," says Thøfner.

Chickens in the egg industry

Egg laying does not appear to be painful in and of itself. But hens in commercial systems are bred to be physically small and to produce large eggs, putting strain on their bodies as they lay, and putting them at risk for painful keel bone fractures. According to the Welfare Footprint Project, keel bone fractures are "the greatest source of physical pain that laying hens endure during their lives." So although egg laying may not be painful, the conditions in commercial systems can lead to significant and painful injuries.

The egg industry & factory farming

Factory farming is where the majority of the world's animal products come from, including hamburgers, sausages, chickens who are eaten, and, yes, eggs. Factory farms are an intensive form of agriculture that aims to garner as much profit by using as few resources as possible. As a result, factory farms concentrate as many animals as they can into one place and spend as little money on them as is feasible. Unsurprisingly, factory farm conditions are horrific for animals, featuring bodily mutilations, crowded and filthy confined spaces to live in, genetic modification, and lives cut cruelly short.

Common factory farming practices in the egg industry

It's estimated that 98.2% of chickens raised for eggs live on factory farms in the US, and 84.2% of commercial hens live in cages globally. Factory farming for eggs pushes chickens to the limit even before we get to the horrific conditions they live in. Because of the pressure for commodification and profit, chickens are forced to lay an unnaturally high number of eggs, almost one egg per day. In contrast, their wild ancestors will often lay only 12 eggs in a year! Tragically, that is only the beginning for the chickens suffering at the mercy of factory farming.

Battery cages

Battery cages confine chickens en masse in order to produce as many eggs at as little cost as possible. The tiny, cramped cages each contain between four and ten chickens, usually made from wire so that factory farms don't have to bother properly cleaning out the chickens' home. The wire mesh pad floors cause a host of foot disorders and painful open lesions, and the lack of movement and exercise frequently leads to osteoporosis. 

In these cages, chickens can't practice their natural behaviors like perching, roosting, dust-bathing, foraging, and exploring, and they can adopt abnormal behaviors-like feather pecking-because of the stress and frustration of living in a barren environment. Especially sadly, they cannot build nests in seclusion-a high priority behavior for laying hens.

Chick culling

To live in these awful conditions producing eggs, factory farms need millions of chickens. But only one kind: female chickens, who can lay eggs. As they breed their millions of chickens, what do factory farms do with the male chicks?

They kill them. Every year factory farms slaughter up to seven billion chicks globally for the crime of being male. The killing of billions of animals simply because they're considered 'surplus' is so abhorrent that some countries, including Germany and France, have moved to ban it. But it's still legal and standard practice in many countries, including the US.

Forced molting

The name "forced molting" disguises a particularly ugly practice, one which has been described as violating animal cruelty laws. When chickens living on factory farms are about a year old, before they're sent to a slaughterhouse, they're starved of food and water for anywhere between 7 and 28 days. It's a process intended to force the hen to produce as many eggs as she can before being sent to slaughter.

Debeaking

Debeaking is intended to stop chickens from pecking one another-though pecking is notoriously difficult to control. While pecking may look aggressive, it's actually a redirected expression of their foraging instincts. Hens peck each other in all agricultural systems, and this is especially true when they live in such crowded quarters with no outlets to pursue their natural behaviors. 

There are two methods of debeaking: infrared trimming and hot blade trimming. Infrared trimming occurs at the hatchery when the birds are just a few hours old. While it interferes with the shape and function of their beak, infrared trimming is less intrusive than alternative methods, and it isn't thought to result in chronic pain. By contrast, hot blade trimming is performed on the farm, when the birds are five to ten days old. This method is painful, stressful, and can lead to chronic pain. 

In the US, beak trimming is either done during the first 24 hours at the hatchery with infrared, or, more commonly, during the first 10 days on-site using a hot blade. The US Department of Agriculture's Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification only allows infrared debeaking.

Pain and suffering of chickens in the egg industry

These practices and others lead to a miserable existence for chickens who get swept up in the brutal machinery of the egg industry. Industry change, when it does occur, is slow and small, as in the move from battery cage eggs to cage-free eggs. Still, these incremental changes represent a marked reduction in the suffering of these animals. While still a far cry from a natural existence, cage-free systems are significantly more humane than battery cage systems. Though they still live with as many as thousands of other birds, cage-free hens are able to walk freely within a barn, rather than being confined to a small cage. And, though they're not always permitted to go outside, these birds usually have access to perches and areas where they can scratch the dirt or dust-bathe. 

Whilst a tiny majority of hens-like Bobby Bob Bob-escape factory farming, most of the 7 billion hens farmed each year will never forage for a worm, dust-bathe, or feel the sun on their backs.

The physical and psychological impacts of factory farming on chickens

Laying eggs may be relatively painless for most chickens, but living as cogs in the machine of the egg industry is full of pain and trauma. Here is just a small list of the pain, both physical and psychological, which chickens can experience during factory farming:

• Bone fractures
• Osteoporosis 
• Beak mutilation and chronic pain thereafter
• Forced starvation and thirst
• Pecking from other unhappy chickens
• High levels of stress
• Lack of privacy
• Deprivation of natural activities such as nesting, perching, dust-bathing, foraging, and exploring
• Cramped and filthy conditions
• Stressful transport
• Painful deaths

How you can help chickens

Factory farming and the egg industry is strong because of market demand for cheap eggs. But humans working together to help chickens are stronger. You can join the fight to take chickens out of cages and ensure a better life for every chicken, egg-laying or not.

Let's give chickens the chance to sing their egg song in peace and happiness again-together. Join us as we work to end the worst abuses chickens face in the egg industry.