Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

civileats.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

631–640 of 879 posts

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#631

Post by edm0nd »

redcobra762 wrote: post #436

I genuinely don't understand why the focus is on egg prices. Who out there is paying more than a total of $3-$5/month more in eggs? And no, even to the absolutely poorest among us, that's not a meaningful amount. Yes, egg prices, as a percentage are going up a lot, but as an absolute value? I can get a dozen eggs from Walmart right now for $5.46. That isn't, by any measurement, a lot of money more than I would have p…

You must not cook for yourself much and have no children.

You can blow through a dozen eggs in a single day or even in one or two recipes.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#632

Post by jamiek88 »

Psillisp wrote: post #608
vengefulduck wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with this argument is the assumption that nature is inherently good. Nature is cruel and uncaring. Moving beyond it is a good thing imo. We’re just lucky that as a species by the roll of the dice we were given the power by nature to usurp it.

Literally picking a fight with Nature, what a trope. What will they think of next man versus self? What if the thing that man creates in his hubris isn’t actually better?

What if it is? We transcend nature and evolution because of our culture and foresight.

We are the ultimate result of 4 billion years of evolution. Nature has made itself redundant in some ways.

Actually, transcend is the wrong word we are still a part of nature of course but we can literally leave the planet and have the ability to irradiate this globe to erase most macroscopic life.

We are an outside context problem as an Iain Banks Ship Mind would say.

It’s a huge responsibility and opportunity that we will almost certainly squander.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#634

Post by thuuuomas »

forty wrote: post #171

Sadly, because the soil are too polluted by PFAS, it is adviced against to eat your own eggs (by medical authorities) where I live (larger paris aera) https://www.iledefrance.ars.sante.fr/polluants-organiques-pe...

A major floodplain in Michigan has a similar problem with dioxin contamination.

https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/mdhhs/Fold...

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#635

Post by edm0nd »

wappieslurkz wrote: post #406
slothtrop wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eggs have obvious health benefits. Land encroachment + emissions is modest, and notwithstanding, that's just something to manage, not avoid altogether. Everything we demand for ourselves encroaches on land.

It doesn't take much of a search to find many strong contra arguments to your reply. https://www.peta.org/features/egg-industry-cruelty/

You lost all credibility by linking to PETA imo

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#636

Post by vessenes »

memsom wrote: post #184

Wow! I wondered about this article - US centric. I wondered because eggs are not expensive here. I just looked [1] [2]. I can get a dozen free range for about US$4 at the current conversion rate. They are a supermarket own brand, but even the "fancy" ones are something like that for 6, but some are actually still close to $4 for 12. The US chicken market (not necessarily eggs specifically) was in the Morgan Spurlock…

The egg story in the US is so strange to me. I just checked my local "premium" (Pacific Northwest) grocery store, and free range eggs are $4/dozen. (https://townandcountrymarkets.com/shop#!/?id=156440568471307...) I guess US food desert type areas are paying much more from the media surrounding this, but even that price comes with a warning on the website that egg supplies are limited, and presumably therefore the price would be lower in times of higher supply.

I have chickens, and the cost including amortization of their real estate puts family eggs at something like $12/dozen.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#637

Post by nsxwolf »

whycome wrote: post #309
pjerem wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do own two chickens since maybe 6 months for random reasons. Before that I thought they were pretty "stupid"/"uninteresting" animals but I was really wrong. They are in fact very lovable little beings. They have interestingly complex relationships between them, they are very social and I do have a special bond with the first I got, especially because we hadn’t the necessary hardware to keep her hot enough for multi…

It’s not the egg industry that will lose out if more people have backyard hens. It’s the poultry industry and the eating general. More people will start to find eating intelligent emotional animals as abhorrent as eating dogs or cats.

My aunt names all her chickens. She will also grab one and twist its head of with her bare hands while carrying on a casual conversation with you.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#638

Post by kouru225 »

I’d say I can’t do it cause I live in NYC, but theres a very famous “Chicken House” in Bedstuy that disproves that. They got a whole chicken coup in their front yard. I got know idea how they keep away stray cats and rats etc, but somehow they’ve been doing it for at least a decade.

So maybe I could

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#639

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

crocowhile wrote: post #463

The egg price is due to the H5N1 epidemics, which also means that this is the least indicated time to get a backyard chicken. The US should have dropped battery caging, like the rest of the world did 15 years ago.

I wonder if spreading the chickens out to all the backyards would prevent spread due to lower density, or if you'd get spread via wild animals anyhow and now it's just impossible to contain and more people are at direct risk.

Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

#640

Post by BobaFloutist »

alistairSH wrote: post #592
noah_buddy wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some sort of goat maybe?

Goats can be territorial, but I'm not aware of them having any particular inclination to guard chickens or livestock. Livestock guard dogs work better, but then you're dealing with a large dog that isn't a pet and isn't socialized like a house dog.

Can't your livestock guard dog also be a pet that's socialized like a house dog? Are the two mutually exclusive?
Post reply on HN