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Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

civileats.com

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

#281

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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?

Everywhere that is never tested. How do you know for sure you are on good soil, and that no contaminated soil was used under your house and garden, which no doubt were levelled before construction started?

This includes feed. Commercial animal foods literally contains waste, such as plastic, due to waste food recycling not being required to be unpacked.

Sure, you _can_ control these things, but more often than not, people don't. Semi commercial hobbyists don't have the money.

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

#282

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My friend would spend summers at the family farm, and the youngest kids would be issued a rabbit as a pet for the duration. They'd then make the kids watch the rabbits be slaughtered and cleaned, and serve them up at the end of the vacation... Straight psychopath approach to child raising. The adults were all convinced this is how you made kids grow up tough

That's straight from the TV trope book, this is how movies/shows portray Evil Organization training ruthless spy assassins (except usually it's a dog, and they have to kill it themselves).

Most tropes have some basis in reality. I've met a few farm-owning parents who view any kind of sentimentality towards animals as counterproductive.

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

#283
post #198

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> It makes no sense to get a £80 vet bill on a chicken that cost £20. This logic is confusing. You are taking a purely transactional view when it comes to the chicken’s health, but you also admitted they don’t turn a profit. In that vein, it makes no sense to get the £20 chicken in the first place. Your utilitarian view is also the opposite of what the person you’re replying to is describing. Do you believe that if o…

I think it is the distinction between "livestock" and "pets". I would also be very surprised if any vets ever managed to treat a hen successfully. They tend to hide any illness until very sick.

My neighbor‘s dog bit one of our chickens. We ended up taking her to the vet and got some antibiotics. she made a full recovery.

And yes, there’s a bit of the mix of pets and livestock. We only have five hens, and they all have names. If you’re naming your animal, is it a pet?

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

#284
As a european that until recently owned 20+ chickens I can tell you no, it is not the answer unless you really want your own chickens.

Owning your own chickens has a bunch of downsides:

- They get sick / get parasites and may require expensive medication or massive amounts of work.

- They require warmth if you live in a cold place like me, and heating costs money.

- They eat a lot and unless you buy in large quantities, it is expensive. And if you buy in large quantities, you must protect the grain from mold and mice which can be hard.

- They require a lot of maintenance since they are pretty stupid and dirty animals that poop in their own water supply, food etc.

- You will get a lot more mice on your property and possibly, in your house.

- You are worried about bird flu, so you need to cover the coop with a roof. Building a roof is expensive, I spent ~$1300 for materials. That is a lot of eggs.

That said, you can get colorful nice eggs from animals you know have a good life and are healthy. Where I am from, that is largely possible in regular stores however but in some areas of the world I assume animal care is a lot worse.

I think more people should have their own animals, but they do require time and effort, more than most people can spare I would believe. We sold all of them due to this reason. We did not profit from having them, but rather lost both time and money but it is (mostly) a fun experience at least. And our waste was heavily reduced since you can feed them your food even if that is illegal where I live if you want to sell your eggs (you can buy a carrot, put it in your bed and sleep with it a week but if you lay it on a plate where you eat your food, it becomes illegal to give them it if you intend to sell the eggs).

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

#285
post #172

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Electric fence? Chickens can fly, my man...

Ummmm.... that is why you clip their wings. (Though clipping one wing is more fun, that way they flap about in circles).

Even if you clipped their wings in such a way as they couldn't fly anymore, they're still short and covered in feathers which are probably not conductive. The electric fence wouldn't work for many reasons. If you're sure they can't fly, you also don't need it.

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

#286
post #212

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The conversation is about the necessity of killing what you eat. Those slugs have nothing to do with either argument nor were they a necessary casualty.

Not sure how killing things and then not eating them is morally superior. If you aren't eating meat you are probably getting most of your calories from grains and legumes. The people that grow and store those for you are killing a lot of animals to get them to your grocery store.

This response feels quite emotional, so I’ll start by saying there was no judgement in my comment. At no point have I made a comment on the morality of the matter. Furthermore, not only do grocery stores not even enter into the conversation, you are assuming to know what the people who grow and sell the food at my local markets eat. I assure you, you do not.

I think you’ll benefit from this video. Don’t let yourself be consumed by emotions of an imaginary argument. The entirety of your point is a response to something you imagined I said and not my words or intentions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExEHuNrC8yU

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

#287
post #30

The letter from Farm Action, linked at the top of the article, is pretty compelling in making their case. A few highlights: > As a result of the smaller flock, egg production has dropped slightly from 8.1 billion eggs per month in 2021 to 7.75 billion eggs per month in December 2024. Importantly, however, per capita production of eggs in the U.S. has not dipped below per capita consumption of eggs in any year between…

Sounds like collusion through a third party. Similar to the landlords all signing up to the same pricing service.

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

#288

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> I'm told the eggs taste way better, I don't really notice it because I really only eat my own eggs, but perhaps I just got used to them At 2 years old my son could blind taste test tell the difference between my neighbor's chicken's eggs and store bought eggs. He refused to eat eggs (still doesn't) until we convinced him to try one of the eggs from our neighbor's chicken's. He liked that egg. Every time we've tried…

I think you demonstrated that eggs taste different, but not better. My 2 year old would only prefer to eat frozen chicken nuggets. That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.

> That doesn’t mean they are superior to actual whole chicken.

It will depend on whether the whole chicken is chicken proper, or one reassembled from nuggets.

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

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think you're spending too much on the eggs then you're not perfectly happy. I grew up with chickens and my family also grew up with them. I'm just saying, something is really wrong with the way you're doing it if you think it's not worth the money. There are ways to do it economically. What do you suppose the big farms feed the chickens to make it economical to not only grow the chickens but also package and s…

> There are ways to do it economically. What do you suppose the big farms feed the chickens to make it economical to not only grow the chickens but also package and ship the eggs profitably for all involved, cheaper than you can do it without packaging and shipping and paying middle men? They feed them shit and treat them like shit. For most people [that I know] the whole point of doing this at home is to do things d…

There is some middle ground. It costs very little to let your chickens roam in your yard or in a cheap shelter that you build yourself. You don't have to feed them premium organic bullshit that costs $5 per pound. I haven't bought any in a while but chicken feed is probably like $0.25-0.50 per pound if you buy it in 50 pound bags.

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

#290
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 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 multiple days, we had to literally keep her warm between our hands.

Now she is a grown up chicken and she loves it when I go outside.

Also they are in fact pretty intelligent animals, and they are really curious about what happens around them.

I’d ever go as far as saying that they could be the perfect household pets if only the evolution gave them sphincters.

That was a nice personal discovery.

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