I like it.  I think the way as a straightforward narrative it addressed a complex issue is great.

There’s a couple things that I wasn’t quite sure about:  “Others exploited this fact” seems rather impersonal and makes me wonder what others?  “...sixteen grown chickens and two hens…”  I’m a country boy, but have no experience with chickens, so I wonder why a hen isn’t a grown chicken.

I love a good moral dilemma.

Perhaps the debate should be about which act provides the best ethics discussion; putting the chickens into a cage to control what happens to them and their eggs, letting them out of their cage so they could eat pesky fellow creatures, or putting them back into the cage once they finished their meal to continue controlling them and their eggs?

Did anyone bother to thank the ant colony for feeding the chickens?

Hard core group here…at leastthe ants were free range, even if the chickens weren’t!