is it not ethical to eat a egg from a chicken I didn't exploit or mistreat ?

From PETA

"As an animal rights group, we cannot condone using animals for any reason, which is why PETA promotes a healthy vegan lifestyle. However, we would not oppose eating eggs from chickens treated as companions if the birds receive excellent care and are not purchased from hatcheries. Make sure you’re ready for the commitment of adopting chickens, as they will continue to be a part of your family long after they stop producing eggs.

Hatcheries breed chickens to have “desirable” traits despite any negative effects this inbreeding may have on their health. It’s also common for sickly chicks to be tossed out and left to die, while male chicks, who don’t produce eggs and are seen as disposable, are often ground up while still alive. Doing business with hatcheries encourages them to continue to breed and hurt chickens. The only ethical way to obtain chickens is to adopt them from animal shelters or rescue groups that have the birds’ best interests at heart.

You should also know that chickens require specialized veterinary care—something that many veterinarians, who are used to working with dogs and cats, will not be able to provide.

Many people choose not to eat eggs for health reasons. All eggs, regardless of their origin, are high in fat and cholesterol and don’t contain any fiber. In many studies, researchers have found that higher levels of cholesterol are linked to a greater risk of having a heart attack. For every 1 percent increase in the amount of cholesterol in your blood, there is a 2 percent increase in your risk of having a heart attack. Conversely, every 1 percent reduction in your cholesterol level reduces your risk by 2 percent. Elevated cholesterol—anything above 150—promotes atherosclerosis, the buildup of cholesterol, fat, and cells in the arteries that feed the heart. When these arteries become clogged, a section of this muscle loses its blood supply. The result is a heart attack.

The best thing that anyone can do to help animals is to choose not to eat them, and we have so many choices as consumers that there’s simply no reason to use animals to feed ourselves. By making this choice, you’ll be helping animals and yourself as well: A vegan diet helps prevent strokes, osteoporosis, kidney stones, many types of cancer, diabetes, hypoglycemia, kidney disease, peptic ulcers, hernias, obesity, gallstones, hypertension, asthma, and many other medical conditions and diseases."

you do what ever is good for YOU. what does it matter what others think?

Ethics are up to the individual.

If you have a pet hen that lays eggs and the hen is loved and well-cared for and the eggs are unfertilized...what is the ethical issue?

The only ethical issue I see is that you prefer to label yourself as a vegan and you're struggling with your desire to keep that label even though you don't see any issue cooking an unfertilized egg from a pet hen.

You have to decide whether common sense or wearing the vegan label is more important to you.

Do whatever you want. But you don't get to bash other people for eating eggs. Vegan is only a label for you, isn't it?

You should only eat trolls or you have no ethics or morals.

I wouldn't eat eggs, but that's my choice. I don't see anything wrong with someone consuming eggs laid by a pet hen, because the hen is not being abused in order for the egg to be produced and the egg is just an unfertilized egg so it's not like a baby chick or anything. Same goes with dairy from a pet cow, but so few of us have access to fairly treated farm animals. Other vegans would say you shouldn't consume anything that isn't yours, but honestly the world would be much better if the animals products we did consume from animals that were treated humanely.

If you eat eggs, or plan to, you would be a Ovo-Vegetarian. Vegans don't eat or use animal products, period.

You must distance yourself from your mother with immediate effect

No one is going to tell me what I can or cant eat :)

Is it OK to eat crops that were pollinated with bees? Those poor little animals work their arses off so that we can have vegan food to eat.

To buy a laying hen, the chicks would have been "sexed" when they were a day old. The process of splitting out the profitable females from the non profitable and discarded/gassed males.

Does buying into the meat industry with this stage involved sit well with your morals?