241–250 of 272 posts
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You might think so, but the Commerce clause has been interpreted to mean that raising food for your own consumption is restraint of trade between the several states: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn "An Ohio farmer, Roscoe Filburn, was growing wheat for use to feed animals on his own farm. The U.S. government had established limits on wheat production based on acreage owned by a farmer, in order to st…
There is no Commerce Clause in Africa.
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Our cat is a pretty good hunter - normally one dead mouse/baby rabbit/vole/bird per day and he leaves the chickens alone. He did pounce on one once by jumping on it off the bonnet of my wife's car, but soon got off it. I think it was more for fun than a serious attempt.
Ha. Yep, I had a similar experience. Tossed a chick (they love getting air and get all excited when they land) at my most friendly cat once without thinking and he instinctively reached out and caught it, but immediately let go and gave me the "oops sorry" look. I suspect the domestic cat/chicken/human triangle goes way back.
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It sounds like in order to get money you need to be raising and selling on the order of 100-300 chickens per year. So we're talking $20-40 year. To put that in perspective for a contract software developer making $100k+/year, that's like spending $20k/year on software licenses.
$.20 cost of vaccination per $5.00 chicken is 4 percent cost. You're quoting 20 percent cost comparison. Am I missing something?
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Please read the article written by Bill. One of the first lines is that chickens are easy to feed because they can make do with stuff they naturally find on the ground. Given grain will help them grow faster, but it's not imperative.
Yes, as I mentioned in my edit to GP, I have now read the article. It still sounds strange to me. I mean, how is it that 3rd country rural people cannot not know about chickens? I assumed this would be about giving flocks to urban poor, where there is precious little area not covered by concrete and the chickens would likely forrage on half poisoned cockroaches or something like that.
After a few years of living in places most people would consider third world, I have come to the conclusion that it is not safe to assume that people living in the third world have knowledge of any given topic.
I think knowledge is one of the things that is lacking the most, which is why it's so sad to see the commies in Beijing only allowing Mickey Mouse state newspapers and breaking the internet to perpetually keep people on the plantation.
Michael Jackson, however, has pretty good name recognition just about everywhere.
I am not poor, but did recently raise chickens for about a year, and did the math on how they fared as an investment. I would disagree they are "easy and inexpensive", though in a 3rd world setting with some luck it may vary. Here's a rough summary from my experience: -1 x Coop (self-made from scavenged wood, home store bought wood, wire, and hinges) ~$400 -5 x laying chickens ~$100 (Chicks are cheaper, but you pay t…
I think this is way out of line. (I also keep chickens, though not with the tractor I'm about to list): Here's a $300 chicken tractor, complete package: https://www.aosom.com/pawhut-96-wooden-backyard-hen-house-ch... Depending on your situation, you might not need much of a coop. I would expect you could get away with $100 in supplies, in the US--not using scavenged wood--if you didn't need an enclosure etc, and just…
Not a bad deal in countries where salaries are low, such that time has a low opportunity cost.
I am not poor, but did recently raise chickens for about a year, and did the math on how they fared as an investment. I would disagree they are "easy and inexpensive", though in a 3rd world setting with some luck it may vary. Here's a rough summary from my experience: -1 x Coop (self-made from scavenged wood, home store bought wood, wire, and hinges) ~$400 -5 x laying chickens ~$100 (Chicks are cheaper, but you pay t…
so most of your cost was the coop. You could just put any old fence in a corner of your garden and you'd be fine. And you can feed them all the leftovers of the day.
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> They might be easier to grow, but in terms of calories they seem much less efficient than, say, potatoes I agree about potatoes, but that only works for relatively cooler climates, i.e. places like Poland or Ireland. It can easily get to 35-37 degrees Celsius in the summer at the place where my parents live (not to mention places like the Indian subcontinent or Africa), at which point storing potatoes becomes a cha…
The classic solution to storing potatoes is the root cellar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_cellar In the US they were used to keep vegetables warmer in the winter (while below household temps), but they should also work for cooling.
My parents live in a village in Eastern Europe with less than $2 a day (I also chip in to financially help them), and they do indeed raise chickens, they've being doing that for the last 15 years or so, since they moved out to the countryside. Bill Gates is correct in his assessment, it's way more profitable to raise chickens than, say, cows. You need to have a bigger barn for cows, you need to do all the hay thing,…
This immediately makes me think that, as the supply of chickens goes up, their value goes down. You won't be able to sell a chicken for $5 anymore if everybody has enough. But the point is taken that they produce a lot of food for how little upkeep they require.
It's very easy for an agricultural industry to go through cycles of overproduction which drive people into bankruptcy (and sometimes suicide), then shortage resulting in high prices.
Having poor transport links (often the case in rural Africa) makes the problem worse, as this instability plays out in each little isolated market.
I am not poor, but did recently raise chickens for about a year, and did the math on how they fared as an investment. I would disagree they are "easy and inexpensive", though in a 3rd world setting with some luck it may vary. Here's a rough summary from my experience: -1 x Coop (self-made from scavenged wood, home store bought wood, wire, and hinges) ~$400 -5 x laying chickens ~$100 (Chicks are cheaper, but you pay t…
I think this is way out of line. (I also keep chickens, though not with the tractor I'm about to list): Here's a $300 chicken tractor, complete package: https://www.aosom.com/pawhut-96-wooden-backyard-hen-house-ch... Depending on your situation, you might not need much of a coop. I would expect you could get away with $100 in supplies, in the US--not using scavenged wood--if you didn't need an enclosure etc, and just…
I have no doubt my coop was over engineered and way more expensive than it should be.(I'm a software developer ;) The biggest cost was wire, and also includes wire fence for a run, feeder/waterer hay bedding (we changed every week to keep down disease!?), etc.
I'm sure there were other wastes in my operation that could have made things more efficient. But learning those things takes time, money, and effort too. I'm sure if my life depended on it it would be different.