Why we don’t eat chickens that lay eggs
Why we don’t eat chickens that lay eggs explores why meat from laying hens and their brothers rarely reaches our plates and how Kipster works to change that.
It used to be common practice to eat meat from laying hens after they slowed down egg production. We used to eat meat from their brothers, the roosters, too. Not anymore. The poultry meat that we eat today comes from meat chickens or so called broilers. They’ve never laid a single egg. Eggs come from a different kind of chicken: laying hens, raised on a specialized poultry farm. Why don’t we eat their meat? Let’s take you down the rabbit hole.
Why broilers end up on your plate and not layers
Broiler chickens grow big and fast, the standard on most commercial chicken farms focused on meat production. They reach up to 5.5 lbs in just 6 to 8 weeks, and therefore ideal for meat production.
Laying hens grow with a different body type. Their energy goes into laying eggs, not building muscle. A layer chicken will start laying eggs when she is between 18 – 22 weeks old. They live up to 90-95 weeks and only weigh up to a maximum of 3.7lbs. That makes them too lean for juicy chicken filet.
So, what happens to their meat? Most of it becomes pet food or livestock feed, gets composted, or, worse, ends up in landfills.
What happens to the males of the laying chicken breeds?
Male chicks from egg-laying breeds don’t lay eggs. And they’re not bred for meat either, they stay small and lean. That makes them economically irrelevant, people say, and that’s where the challenge begins. In the U.S. alone, over 350 million baby roosters are killed every year, on the day they hatch.
The meat of the laying hen
After 70 to 90 weeks of laying eggs, the production of the hens drops and their eggshells become too brittle. They’re no longer seen as viable for the market. At this stage, in some cultures, they are sent to a slaughterhouse and their meat is used in soups and other dishes However, in places where consumers tend to be more affluent, the trend is to eat broilers and less layer hen meat and roosters. At home in the U.S., the economic feasibility of processing layer hens is often lacking, leading to culling them on farm. Just like their brothers, they are then used for livestock feed, industrial applications, or, worse, discarded in landfills.
Kipster’s goal is to utilize all resources produced by the farm to feed people
At Kipster, we believe every chick deserves to be raised with care, including the roosters. We believe that every farm animal born to serve human needs should live a life worth living. We need to ensure that their lives are never wasted. It is very challenging to eliminate stress for chickens on a commercial farm altogether, but we try to reduce suffering as much as we can. Chicken-related species in the wild live in small flocks and can live up to 6 or 7 years old. We cannot give them such a life in a farm setting. That’s why we constantly wonder if animals should have a place in our food chain at all.
But, for now, when their time comes, as long as we farm animals, their meat should feed people. Just like the hens who’ve finished laying eggs, the young roosters are an untapped source of valuable protein. Two roosters or hens can avoid the need to raise a broiler chicken. That’s why we want to bring meat from egg farms, both hens and roosters, back to your plate.
Feeding chickens with food we can’t eat
Our hens are fed with by-products from crop and food processing, such as second clear wheat meals, soy hulls, or distiller grains. These are ingredients that are perfectly fine for chickens to eat, but that people do not want or cannot eat. Our chickens turn this into eggs (and eventually also into meat).
This kind of feed helps us lower the environmental footprint of our eggs and meat. We need less land to feed the chickens and it reduces greenhouse gas emissions, because we’re not growing extra crops just for our laying hens.
Roosters might take longer to grow and need more feed than broilers. But when they eat by-products and foods left-over from food manufacturing, that inefficiency becomes a strength. We turn it into feed, and free up space to grow nutritious crops for people instead. Aligning the number of layer hens and roosters with the available by-products and surplus food means that fewer chickens can be fed. Given that people are consuming more animal-based proteins than recommended amounts, and not enough plant-based foods, this seems like a no-brainer to us.
The challenge of processing Kipster birds in the U.S.
Kipster is the very first commercial egg layer farm in the U.S. in years to not cull its male chicks when its U.S. farm opened in 2022, similar to Kipster’s approach in Europe. However, We have faced significant challenges in finding appropriate facilities to process the birds. The smaller size and leaner build of our hens and roosters have made them unsuitable for large-scale slaughterhouses. As a result, we had to make the difficult decision to cull day-old roosters and old layer hens on the farm, sending them to rendering facilities, for the first time in the company’s history. Despite the challenges, we have managed to donate most of the meat from the roosters that were raised and processed previously to food banks, demonstrating the potential to make use of these birds in a meaningful way [check the video here].
Infrastructure built for broilers
The U.S. meat supply chain is currently ill-equipped to handle the smaller roosters and hens bred for egg production. Large commercial poultry processing facilities are designed for the larger broiler birds. Processing layer hens and roosters, which don’t fit into the standard equipment, becomes difficult and expensive. Some specialized poultry facilities can manage smaller birds, but they are less automated and only handle a few hundred to a few thousand birds daily, making the process costly and is logistically challenging when we have 24,000 chickens at a time.
The chase for change
Despite the challenges, the potential benefits of integrating roosters and spent hens into the food system are significant. By utilizing all poultry produced in the egg industry, we can reduce waste, lower our dependence on broiler chickens, and promote a more sustainable and ethical approach to poultry farming.
What needs to happen
To achieve these goals, a concerted effort is required to develop a processing infrastructure for these birds to bring their more sustainably and humanely produced meat to market at a reasonable price. Their meat may be more expensive than that from conventional broiler chickens but it could meet the interest of consumers that are looking for meat products from more sustainable and humanely raised animals. Less meat but better meat is our approach.
Why in-ovo sexing is a temporary solution for us
To stop the killing of one-day old male chicks, Kipster has used in-ovo sexing technology for the first time in the U.S. This technology identifies male embryos early, preventing the hatching of unwanted males and avoiding the culling process altogether. In-ovo sexing represents a crucial interim step forward, allowing us to eliminate chick culling while we work on developing more humanely meat production and processing. However, it’s important to recognize that in-ovo technology doesn’t change the food system at large; it indirectly supports the continuation of the broiler industry without addressing broader systemic issues.
That’s why we’re not entirely comfortable with preventing male chicks from being born at all. Because they’re not useless. They just don’t fit the system. For now, in-ovo sexing is the best alternative we have. But it’s not where we want to stop.
A small number of Kipster roosters make it to market
The in-ovo sexing machine has an error rate of less than 0.5%. Just over 100 male chicks were not detected and hatched anyway. We brought these male chicks to Farmer Brad, who raises them for meat and sells them to local customers in Indiana. In the meantime, we’ll keep exploring ways to bring the meat from egg farming to market, humanely raised and processed, preferably in line with the standards from Certified Humane®, from Hatch to Harvest™.
