Are these little "peepers" ethical? are they effective?

[JoshB]

 

[Hen-Gen]

Are they effective? No idea. Are they ethical? Not in my book. We keep hens in unnatural conditions and then wonder why habits like feather pecking and cannibalism break out!

 

[Marigold]

Agree - what happened to the ‘two sq.m per bird’ rule? Yes, you might get occasionally get one aggressive hen, even given enough space, but needing to use so many beak bits in such crowded conditions shows that the conditions of care are appalling.
Maybe not quite as bad as routinely burning off the end of the beaks on all the hens, though.

 

[bigyetiman]

Agree as well. Totally unnatural, and unethical in my book

 

[Shadrach]

Chicken keeping ethics. Now that is one long slippery slope.
I've never tried pinless peepers and have no idea if they work or not.
I suppose if one keeps chickens in a coop and run then or just in a coop like some commercial concerns and there is a feather pecking problem for example, these might seem like an option.
To put these on a free range chicken seems downright stupid.
So, they are an option for a particular set of keeping circumstances that may promote the behaviour they are supposed to address.
Change the keeping circumstances rather than go the peepers route would be my choice.

 

[JoshB]

Thanks for all the input everyone. Honestly I had never seen these before and I got an Instagram ad for them (of all places)
I just wanted to be clear, I wasn't considering using them (I have 5 free range hens!) I just hadn't seen them before and was very curious!