Why I Would Raise Chickens • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#261

Post by rmah » Thu, Jun 09, 2016, 10:21 PM UTC

pitt1980 wrote: post #45

bryanlarsen wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the impression that's for a fully grown chicken sold for meat. I have no idea how big those chickens are. In North America live chickens sell for between 30 and 50 cents a pound. The chickens in the video look like small roasters, definitely under 10 pounds.

how am I able to buy a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store for $5? seems like I've getting pretty much everything that's economically viable from the chicken, plus a fair amount of labor put into the chicken

US agriculture is extremely efficient. Agriculture in underdeveloped nations is, usually, inefficient. The retail price typically only costs less because there are less steps between producer and buyer.

For example, in the US, only about 25% of the cost of bread is for the bread itself (wheat, baking, etc). IIRC, in egypt, about 50% of the retail price of bread is materials/production. Thus bread there costs 1/2 what it costs in the US. But egypt is an outlier in agriculture with an extremely high wheat yields for a nation at their economic situation. Probably due to the fertility of the nile.

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#262

Post by cplease » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 1:32 AM UTC

creshal wrote: post #239

cplease wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get what the words say. What I am remarking on is that engaging in domestic, socially-acceptable and conventionally female work around the household for the economic benefit of ones family (as opposed to oneself) is a highly strained interpretation of "empowering." Yes, if the alternative is wallowing in penury and being completely economically dependent, it is certainly better. But empowering?

Why is it not empowering to give women more economic independence, in way that's sustainable in their societies? Suffragettes in Europe had to fight for more economic rights for fifty years after getting the right to vote, and it was messy, protracted battle. (Until the 1970s, German husbands could dictate whether their wife were allowed to work or not, and kept control over their earnings for even longer.)

It's "empowering" in that sense for anyone to get more money. It's "empowering women" to give them opportunities, including economic opportunities, which they don't already have or to which there are barriers.

What I'm saying is that chickens are not "empowering women" in societies where it is and always has been acceptable, status quo, and already conventional for women to raise chickens; a "woman's animal," small and "close to home," for domestic purposes. They already have that opportunity!

Empowering would be raising goats and challenging the notion of a "woman's animal." Or maybe, you know, getting some education and having a life beyond subsistence farming.

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#263

Post by shalmanese » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #127

thevardanian wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt that Beef is a more efficient if source of meat than Chicken. I think Chicken meat is a lot more efficient. A little quick googling and I found: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio

Why would you think that? Larger animals are usually much more energy efficient for various reasons - less surface area to radiate heat, and economies of scale with larger organs.

Cows are slaughtered at 80 weeks while chickens are slaughtered at 6 - 8 weeks. That extra order of magnitude of basal metabolic rate is where the energy gets consumed.

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#264

Post by Chetane » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 6:53 AM UTC

rconti wrote: post #158

paganel wrote: post #69

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.

I've read multiple investment thesis refer to that as the "chicken cycle", happening every 2-3 years. Here's of of those analysis if you're interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/m91vexlccplfsje/Project%20Chicken%... (Page 7)

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#265

Post by mapt » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 8:02 AM UTC

tonmoy wrote: post #77

whiddershins wrote: post #63

Re: many people wondering why this hasn't happened organically, it is easy to underestimate how much cultural attitudes can affect common practice. As an anecdote, when I visited rural China a couple of years back I asked my friends who grew up there why, if most people had one chicken, they didn't simply grow a few more? The response was "you don't know what it was like back then. In the Mao attitude people would sa…

This seems very accurate. When I was younger it was a social taboo for middle class families in rural area to raise animals in out country. Then the government started blasting propaganda about how farming fish and raising chickens/goats was a noble "entrepreneur" like thing, and now it does not seem like that much of a taboo any more.

There is a campaign in West Africa right now to grow 'grasscutter', aka greater cane rat, as an entrepreneurial alternative to bush meat and as a noble poverty reduction measure.

The biggest argument for micro livestock in extreme poverty areas is the barrier to entry. You can run a large chicken, rabbit, cuy, or grasscutter farm for less than it costs to own a single pair of cattle, and nobody in the area has high amounts of saved wealth.

http://www.nap.edu/read/1831/chapter/1#xv is an attempt to explore the options for getting the world's subsistence farmers (mostly growing crops that have already been heavily automated) into livestock production (which still require lots of human care).

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#266

Post by mapt » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 8:08 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #259

ane wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, beef and lamb are the most energy consuming sources of meat. (A dairy producing cow is different.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_conversion_ratio For cattle, a FCR range from less than 5 to more than 20 kg feed dry matter per kg gain may be encountered.[ Whereas for chickens: Poultry has a feed conversion ratio of 2 to 1.

I believe you, but I'm very surprised. That has larger animals almost universally less efficient than smaller animals, which is the exact opposite of the expected efficiency due to Kleiber's law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleiber%27s_law >a cat, having a mass 100 times that of a mouse, will have a metabolism roughly 32 times greater than that of a mouse. And yet this is saying that a mice sized animal should be e…

The larger livestock will usually have a much longer lifespan. It has to keep its flesh heated above ambient for that entire lifespan. If Mouse A lives 100x longer and puts on the same weight and achieves the same stature as Mouse B, it's spent ~100x as much energy getting to the same physiological place as Mouse B.

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#267

Post by pimlottc » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 10:15 AM UTC

bko wrote: post #3

> If you read this article, watch the video above, and answer one question below, I will donate—on your behalf via Heifer—a flock of chickens to a family in poverty. Giving a flock of chickens to desperately poor families sounds like a great idea that will pay dividends for many years. However, I can't help but be reminded of the many charitable programs that sound great but end up having very unusual unintended cons…

I just signed up today but I was sad to see the promotion has already finished.

> Thank you Gates Notes Insiders! For our Coop Dreams giveaway, I partnered with Heifer International to donate more than 100,000 chickens on behalf of the Gates Notes Insider community. The campaign is now closed, but we may do something like it again.

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#268

Post by epalmer » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 3:03 PM UTC

dwc wrote: post #57

epalmer wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in typical suburbia in Virginia USA. My youngest has a chinese friend whose family raises chickens in their yard. I'm pretty sure this is against zoning. They share their chicken and some wonderful vegetables from their gardens with the closest neighbors. So far, so good. I expect this will not persist.

> I'm pretty sure this is against zoning. Perhaps, but you might be surprised. Years ago I kept chickens and checked the zoning here (suburbs of Phoenix). No problem with a flock of hens. Roosters have restrictions. Many places are similar.

It turns out that it is permitted unless the neighborhood has restrictions. I think she is not in that sort of neighborhood. +1 for freedom to raise chickens.

Sec. 24-11. - Principal uses permitted. https://henrico.us/pdfs/countyattorney/Chpt024Zoning.pdf

I was wrong and am pleasantly surprised.

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#269

Post by nibnib » Fri, Jun 10, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

hugh4 wrote: post #175

paganel wrote: post #69

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,…

>You need to have a bigger barn for cows, you need to do all the hay thing, which is very time consuming and demands a lot of extra work just for feeding said cows, you need to pay someone to take care of the cows when they go out to eat in the summer on the communal field Depends where you are, of course. Some places you just leave your cows out eating grass for years until it's time to slaughter them, then you hire…

The context is 2$/day, it's not exactly fair to suggest people hire some dudes with helicopters.

Re: Why I Would Raise Chickens

#270

Post by anonbanker » Sat, Jun 11, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

dgacmu wrote: post #209

jegoodwin3 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be more clear: The commerce clause was interpreted such as to allow the federal government to impose limits on agricultural production even when the food is being used to feed your own animals. We already have numerous such restrictions (e.g., brewing beer). A key point in this, in fact, was that it doesn't matter if it's being produced for your own (animals) consumption vs. for sale. But that has nothing to do wi…

you should read deeper into Wickard. SCOTUS decalred washing your dishes to be considered commerce. For more information on the extent of the Commerce Clause into your life, I'd suggest looking at Clarence Thomas' dissent in Raich v. Gonzalez. it's an eye-opener.