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Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

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

#141

Post by AllegedAlec »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #129
sandermvanvliet wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some other downsides: - The smell… Chicken crap is horrible. Our neighbour has chickens, we have flies. Lots of black flies. - Bye bye garden… My dad has two chickens (did I mention the smell?) that free roam and absolutely tear up everything looking for a tasty bite. - Can’t eat the eggs This isn’t necessarily a chicken problem but mostly a problem with chemical industry. We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination a…

> We’ve had a lot of PFOA/PFAS contamination and public health advise says to not eat eggs from backyard chickens Where?

Purportedly the Netherlands, but the research was badly performed.

KNOWN PFAS contamination was around heavy industry, and yeah, if you live near those regions, maybe don't. Otherwise proceed with scepticism and/or some testing.

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

#142

Post by pests »

colechristensen wrote: post #37
dgfitz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500/month for a dog? 500 for solar? Do you need a consultant?

For starters nobody uses an electric fence for chickens. You have them for cattle because they’re so big building a fence sturdy enough they can’t just push over is expensive.

Are we forgetting chickens can fly? Why are we using fences

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

#143

Post by wisty »

AngryData wrote: post #114

If you build a pen out of anything other than otherwise garbage materials and a small roll of the cheapest fence, you are going to be spending even more money. Also whats with people buying like a dozen chickens? Do you eat an entire dozen eggs every single day? No? Then you don't need a dozen chickens. 2 chickens will often result in people giving away tons of eggs because they have too many. Maybe a few years down…

Chickens are social animals and require a pack. A dozen seems excessive though.

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

#144

Post by defrost »

matwood wrote: post #122
defrost wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spreadsheet in isolation view does seem odd to farming types. We have chickens, my father's still looking after them and he's had chooks since his birth in 1935 .. along with at least 10 fruit trees on any property we've had, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, herbs, pumpkins, and all the usual stuff that you can sow and that grows pretty well on its own (we've all had other jobs .. but this all stems from eithe…

Your post got me thinking about where I am right now in my life. We’re planning how we want to retire and recently bought an old home that has a smattering of produce trees. Citrus, olives, figs, and walnuts. Learning how to deal with them (with help from the neighbors) has been stressful, but also very satisfying after mainly being in front of a computer for 20+ years.

The ideal flow is investing a lot of time in (say) the first two or three years (three full season cycles gives you a fair amount of exposure) getting the swing of watering, planting, sowing, gathering waste, etc.

With any luck you can then transition into barely spending an hour at most a day (on most days) keeping things ticking along .. bursts of weeding, pruning, turning soil as needed and letting the plants do the work.

It's good steady exercise keeping on top of a substantial but "small" home garden but it doesn't have to suck up all your time once you get the swing of it.

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

#146

Post by gadders »

qq99 wrote: post #93

As someone who once built a large coop [1] then just bought a pre-built shed for the 2nd coop, it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution. You will probably lose money overall for quite some time. I'm still probably underwater. BUT, there are definite upsides: - Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and…

I've had chickens for probably 15 years now, starting with 3 and ending up with about 20 (mixture of hybrids, pedigrees and rescued battery/farmed hens) and 2 geese. This happens a lot with chickens. Chickens are a gateway drug to more chickens. If you have a few chickens, they take about as much looking after as a rabbit - keep their food and water topped up, and clean them out once a week.

I agree that you won't make money or a profit. The coop money you will probably never earn back, but I can cover the cost of a sack of feed (£12 or so) by selling boxes to colleagues for £1 each.

I think the eggs taste better because a) what the hens eat and b) because they are much fresher.

I've had to kill chickens (and hate doing it), which is sad, but I've never taken one to a vet. It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20.

We've brought chickens inside the house when they're ill (we have tiled floors) but don't do it on a regular basis. If chickens weren't incontinent, though, they would make great indoor pets. Surprisingly smart and pleasant animals. This will also sound weird but if you pick one up, they also smell nice - kind of like a new puppy smell.

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

#147

Post by burnished »

pulkitsh1234 wrote: post #106
qq99 wrote: post #93

As someone who once built a large coop [1] then just bought a pre-built shed for the 2nd coop, it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution. You will probably lose money overall for quite some time. I'm still probably underwater. BUT, there are definite upsides: - Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and…

> If you really like eating chicken, you may end up finding it difficult to eat them again in the future after you develop a bond with them. I used the believe the same, but as I found out on HN, there are a lot of people who won't bat an eye killing animals raised on their own land. Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals. But then the question should be is it just the "bond" which is holding someone…

Past generations of my family used to name animals that they raised for meat after dishes they could end up in. There are practices people can engage in to distance themselves from the animals they interact with.

But also some people who raise animald for meat hire a person to collect them for slaughter in part because of the emotional toll involved.

As to your last question.. I think you might be confused? People don't like to kill in general. Go outside and ask people how they felt getting their first kill on a hunt as a kid, you're going to realize that a unifying element is learning to deal with harming another animal.

Bonus: being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different.

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

#148

Post by lewispollard »

burnished wrote: post #139
qq99 wrote: post #93

As someone who once built a large coop [1] then just bought a pre-built shed for the 2nd coop, it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution. You will probably lose money overall for quite some time. I'm still probably underwater. BUT, there are definite upsides: - Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and…

I used to get tipped in eggs by this wonderful human at a bar I worked at and while I'm not sure I could tell them apart in a blind taste test I can say that the variety of pretty colors the egg shells came in and the richness of the yolk combined to make them noticeably more satisfying. I have a lot of experience tasting things though, I could absolutely see someone having a similar experience to mine and chalking i…

> I used to get tipped in eggs by this wonderful human at a bar

As someone who lives in a country where tipping culture doesn't extend to bars, I was imagining something quite different at first

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

#150

Post by MichaelRo »

qq99 wrote: post #93

As someone who once built a large coop [1] then just bought a pre-built shed for the 2nd coop, it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution. You will probably lose money overall for quite some time. I'm still probably underwater. BUT, there are definite upsides: - Chickens are very sweet animals, and are quite intelligent. You will grow to love all the silly things they do. You can pet them, they are super soft, and…

Definitely it's not about the cost and convenience.

And I haven't seen it discussed much, which tells a lot that the HN-ers are city dwellers with little experience in the countryside life. But the biggest, nastiest, deepest problem with anything animal is ... shit.

Animals produce shit and lots of animals produce loads of shit. And chickens don't have the notion of "this area is for eating, this one's for shitting", they will shit all over the place. So if you don't enclose them and can run to your porch, they'll shit it up so gotta be careful where you step or sit on. If you enclose them, better be prepared to wipe shit of your boots coze no way you can avoid it forever. Then the "pleasant" activity of cleaning up loads of shit from the chicken coop and dispose it somewhere.

Overall, having lived on a farm, my childhood memories of interaction with animals resume to "lots and lots of shit everywhere" :)

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