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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?

#331

Post by yndoendo »

nemo44x wrote: post #323
whycome wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t know, farmers always had dogs on the farm but they didn’t eat them and continued to eat the chickens. Chicken is really great and succulent. Hard to resist frying one of them up and sucking the meat off the bone. Absolutely no desire to do that with a dog.

I say the smartest hunters are the farmers.

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

#332

Post by 42772827 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #268
addicted wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murder is also part of the “circle of life”, whatever that may mean, given that it’s pablum that means nothing. As is disease. We rightfully find these immoral and don’t engage in them. That’s not a defense of the immoral act. It’s just words to describe the immoral act.

Try this then: every animal eats other living things to survive. We have been doing it for a billion years. Is a basic drive built into it DNA. After that, is just a question of which living things you are going to eat.

The key difference between humans and every other animal that has ever existed is our ability to reason about systems and the morality of actions.

Some birds will abandon weaker chicks to focus on the ones most likely to survive. Others will allow siblicide. That these behaviors exist and have existed for billions of years is a fact orthogonal to morality because birds don’t have the capacity to reason about systems and the mortality of actions.

“Living things” is a sleight of hand, logically. When it comes down to it, everything is just atoms in the end. So why not murder? Why not steal? Why not exploit the poor? Reductionism leads us down some very dark paths indeed.

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

#333

Post by arkey »

TuringNYC wrote: post #314
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…

Thanks for the detail. I never thought about vet needs for chickens. How would you know they are sick? I know with my cat, her mood and activity would shift. Is it apparent when a chicken is sick?

There are several conditions that have visible consequences, such as injuries, malformations, anomalies or a general affectation of their appearance. Plenty of those can be quite disturbing for someone with no experience.

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

#334

Post by nemo44x »

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…

> - Chickens are very sweet animals

Personally, I find them rather savory. Although deep fried with a bit of honey is good too.

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

#335

Post by pif »

MagicMoonlight wrote: post #266
h0l0cube wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the highest end organic feed tho Maybe feed them your food scraps? Or bulk buy and prepare your own grains/pulses?

This makes me wonder - would chickens grow more efficiently if you cook their food for them? When we invented cooking it gave us a massive advantage because of the nutritional efficiency, yet we feed animals just random raw stuff. Would feeding them porridge instead of grain lead to higher output?

Your proposal may give interesting results in a couple hundred generations of chickens, when evolution has had some time to take profit of the cooked food. But, concerning the hens that lay the eggs I'm supposed to eat, please refrain from experimenting with them, thanks!

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

#336

Post by arkey »

numba888 wrote: post #238
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…

> You may have to euthanize a chicken, likely by hand (literally) via cervical dislocation. It still ranks among the worst things I've ever had to do in my life. Traditionally it's done by decapitation. Head dies instantly. No need to suffer. Body runs for a while. Don't forget to ask for forgiveness...

If you properly dislocate it (thus severing the nerve) it doesn't even get to twitch. In theory it's slightly cleaner and better even for the chicken.

It does require a bit of technique though, and the consequences of not doing it right at first can be very upsetting.

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

#337

Post by giantg2 »

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."

Or you might find them delicious and need to raise more of them.

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

#338

Post by xaldir »

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…

> Maybe they just never develop a bond with these animals.

I love my chickens and I'm really sad when I lose some to predators. Yet I have no issue to harvest them for eating. They are not pets, I raise them for eggs and meat.

Maybe it's because I was raised on a farm, but I make a difference between pets and farm animals and that does not mean that I don't have a "bond" with some of the latter.

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

#339

Post by chronogram »

gruez wrote: post #318
Peanuts99 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eggs are still pretty cheap in the UK, free range ones for £1.50 or so.

For one or a dozen?

It's about €0.35 per organic egg in the Netherlands (€3.19/10 in one store or €5.99/15 at another). The organic eggs have better shells and are so cheap it's not worth bothering with free range eggs, even if you don't care for the chickens. It helps that they're not refrigerated and last a long time, so you don't have to pay for spoilage.

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

#340

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

giantg2 wrote: post #337
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." Or you might find them delicious and need to raise more of them.

Do you know anyone where this has been the case?
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