All good questions that you asked, ta33.

1. True, but we don't intentionally expose them to that risk. We watch over them, but s**t happens. I have seen a hen killed by a hawk. I'd say it is fast. Where the whole picture is concerned, that hen had a mighty good life until the end. Also, sometimes a backyard farmer kills a chicken very fast & mercifully. In my case, esp. if it is an old hen, I don't mind too much that it died to keep the hawk's babies alive. But it's the hen's feelings that matter.

2. This is a typical going-in-circles argument. I could just as soon ask a person born in a literal jail to its mother, a baby who was destind to stay there all its life, if that is fine with him - if his life is "worth" living. I don't know. Ask a suicidal person if he wishes he had never been born; ask seriously disabled, pain wracked person how he feels. You will get a variety of responses.

Some of our chickens are hatched under a hen, and cared for by that hen, and sometimes by other hens, also.

3. I have seen dead chicken bodies pretty much stepped-over and ignored by the other chickens. Whether they "suffer" in some inchoate way, a way that I myself can't perceive, I don't know.

As I have posted in the past, no living thing, esp. not humans, can exist without killing something or other, directly or indirectly. Some people would therefore conclude that it doesn't matter at all, then. I just disagree: I think that we have a moral responsibility to attempt to reduce the suffering that we cause in the course of living our lives. You do your part and I do mine. Personally, I don't carry a measuring stick, but I can't help noticing when people take a don't-give-s**t attitude.

POSTED BY ta33: (I have this all backwards - Carla)
Here are some interesting questions to ponder:

-- getting killed by a predator can cause more pain and suffering to a critter than slaughter.

-- if a chicken weren't bred for laying eggs or food, it would have never got to experience life in the first place.

-- if a chicken is killed, who suffers as a result, assuming a quick, painless death by slaughter? Do the other chickens mourn its loss?