Chicken Farmers: fact or fiction? It's ok to eat chickens that have been ovulating when harvested?

Question

Chicken Farmers: fact or fiction? It's ok to eat chickens that have been ovulating when harvested?

Answer 1

It is done all of the time.  As an earlier responder wrote chickens (females) after reaching reproductive development are in a state of pretty much a continuous process of ovulation.

Laying hens,after starting to decline in egg production in large egg laying operations, are routinely sold for meat production.  This meat most typically goes into soups, pot pies, etc.

Answer 2

absolutely true

Answer 3

Bikini Boy and others said it.

I see ~20 week old RIR/s*x-link hens all the time at Asian market type slaughter houses.  

They have been laying for about 1 week.

Eggs can be pulled out of their ovaducts and eaten if desired.  The chickens are fine to eat.

As mentioned by the other responders:

Cornish-rock cross hens, the typical supermarket variety,

are only 7 weeks old (~ 5 lbs LW), thus not old enough to lay.

Stewing hens are hens that are 12-36 months old,

they are still productive, but no longer at their peak production, thus not cost effective.

They still have eggs unless they went into seasonal or force molt.

Purhaps If eggs were fertile, and you ate the eggs plus hen,

there might be some religious laws.

Ask a Rabbi.

Answer 4

There is a religious law that makes it wrong to eat both a bird and its young/eggs. You may eat the bird, but not while she is caring for eggs of young.

This was an act of respect for life, the same respect that said don't drink a cow's milk and eat the cow's calf. There was never a claim that the combination would harm you. But failure to respect the life of other animals came down from the Hindu, the origin of Judaism

Answer 5

Is this a joke question?  Every time a chicken lays an egg they're ovulating!  Butcher them and all you will find is eggs in several stages of development.

Under normal home raised conditions, most hens will lay two out of every three days for 9 months or so a year.

Answer 6

It is completely okay.

Answer 7

Yes it is okay. Stewing hens are yummy and so are the shelless eggs you sometimes find inside.

Answer 8

Laying Hens are eaten all the time.

A farmer would pick the least producer to eat first. In agri-business (factory farm), the hens dont get old enoguh to lay before being  slaugthered.

Answer 9

chickens raised for MEAT production are harvested BEFORE they start ovulate.

Hens, raised for egg production, are harvested when they STOP ovulate, since the producction of eggs IS, in fact, the ovulation.

However, in family farms, sometimes hens ovulating (producing eggs) are taken as food for the family. It doesn't matter.

Hens ovulate everyday (ideally), if they stop ovulating it doesn't make sense to keep them at the farm.

Eggs are hen's ovulums. (Ovulum means egg in latin)