{"id":42542,"date":"2024-12-20T13:48:28","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T19:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.incredibleegg.org\/?page_id=42542"},"modified":"2026-02-10T10:34:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-10T16:34:34","slug":"how-hens-are-housed-continued","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.incredibleegg.org\/egg-farming-today\/how-hens-are-housed\/how-hens-are-housed-continued\/","title":{"rendered":"How Hens Are Housed, Continued"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Hens Are Housed, Continued<\/h1>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Continual progress<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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As egg farming evolves as an industry, farmers are always interested in discovering, testing out, and implementing new practices. The goal shared by all egg farmers is to continuously improve the way they farm for the good of their flocks, the environment, and the people who rely on eggs as part of their healthy diets.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Necessary, but not easy<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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These days, egg farming is mostly specialized, with larger egg farms receiving their laying hens from separate hatcheries that are devoted to producing chicks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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What many people don\u2019t realize is that there are different types of chickens: some that have been carefully bred to lay more high-quality eggs, and others\u2014called \u201cbroilers\u201d\u2014that have been bred and are raised for the quality and quantity of their meat.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Broiler chickens can be either male or female, but since only female chickens can lay eggs, in the egg industry, there isn\u2019t a need for males. One of the difficult realities of modern egg farming is that there\u2019s no way for egg farms to afford to raise and maintain the male chicks the hatcheries produce, and so they are culled shortly after they\u2019re hatched.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Egg farmers continue to support research into solutions to this difficult fact of egg farming. For example, there\u2019s been a lot of progress made by researchers exploring methods and technology to help identify a chick\u2019s sex long before it is hatched. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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In early 2025, a few U.S. hatcheries introduced in-ovo sexing technologies and began producing the first eggs that are sexed before hatch. While this technology is not yet commercially scalable, it holds promise, and the egg industry continues to invest in innovations to solve for this challenge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Spent hens<\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Young chickens don\u2019t lay eggs for about four months, and hens don\u2019t produce eggs forever. Just as with male chickens, egg farms can\u2019t afford to feed and care for non-productive hens and still stay in business. So, when hens can no longer produce eggs, they are humanely euthanized. The meat from the \u201cspent hens\u201d serves a useful purpose, most often as an ingredient in pet food or in farm fertilizer.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continual progress As egg farming evolves as an industry, farmers are always interested in discovering, testing out, and implementing new practices. The goal shared by all egg farmers is to continuously improve the way they farm for the good of their flocks, the environment, and the people who rely on eggs as part of their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":42427,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-42542","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Hens Are Housed, Continued - American Egg Board<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.incredibleegg.org\/egg-farming-today\/how-hens-are-housed\/how-hens-are-housed-continued\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Hens Are Housed, Continued - American Egg Board\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Continual progress As egg farming evolves as an industry, farmers are always interested in discovering, testing out, and implementing new practices. 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