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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?

#41
post #2

Build vs buy. You can be me and build an in-house flock, pay $100/mo in feed, $500 for a livestock guard dog, $100/mo for dog food, $500 for a solar electric fence, and then $500 for a few coops, etc. It'll pay off before I'm dead, I think! -- right? Right?!

What’s missing from all the calculations so far is the worth of the time you put in. Maintaining chickens isn’t free on a daily you spend around half an hour, sometimes more to tend to your chickens. Even by minimum wage standards, you’re spending quite a bit more just in labor than buying a dozen eggs for $2 more than what it was 2 years ago.

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

#42
Ok, so maybe a controversial opinion:

I've been buying local, pasture raised chickens for the last 10 years. I am very fortunate to have had the income to allow me to do so. I also don't eat that many eggs (roughly a dozen a month - so it hasn't been that expensive).

The price of my eggs was always between $8-$12 / dozen (including this weekend when I easily found and bought another 2 dozen). I get that I was buying "already expensive eggs", because apparently other people were buying eggs $2 / dozen.

However, to be frank, I'm not sure how people expect eggs to be so cheap. Taking into account the land, the water, the feed, the labor, the transportation all to create a dozen eggs, it must cost more than $2.

Clearly paying a little more for the eggs has allowed me to support farms which are robust to large shocks like this (both in terms of input costs and in terms of health of chickens). I really hope as a society we can all move away from the unsustainable farms and improve the economics of sustainable farming so that everyone can afford locally grown, healthy eggs for centuries to come.

In the meanwhile, there will be people who have to buy fewer eggs (either because of health regulations - or because reality checks will always exist like with market shocks right now).

Hopefully, after this crisis, through graduated health regulation we can cause a controlled increase to the floor price of unsustainably grown eggs, while also (through technology and economies of scale) reducing the floor price of locally sourced, sustainably grown eggs.

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

#43

Kind of off topic, but instead of culling flocks infected with the flu, are there any farmers just seeing which chickens survive and then letting them breed?

I spoke with a chicken farmer last week.

The government comes in and takes over. You don’t get to decide, they kill all your chickens and cut you a check.

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

#44

no, bird flu can still infect your backyard flock

Is there any reason I shouldn’t let my half-dozen birds get it and die or survive, see if any develop immunity and work from there?

Watching your chickens die sucks, my friend. They don't just drop dead overnight. It's often many days of watching them slowly suffer.

Then imagine spreading that misery to all the wild birds you love in your neighbourhood.

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

#46

We have raised a few hens at our hobby farm over the years. The eggs are nice and all, but they're actually quite fragile animals, and then you go and get attached to them and they get suddenly sick and slowly die on you in horrible ways. And veterinary care for backyard chickens is seriously problematic and difficult to get and expensive. My wife fell seriously in love with keeping chickens and it kind of emotionall…

Yes, raising animals requires the mindset of… raising animals. They’re not pets and life happens to them which most people are very disconnected from these days.

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

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have 10 (backyard) chickens and spend about $40/mo in feed. We average about five eggs per day when they are laying, so let's say that's 150 eggs per month. That's $0.26/egg or $3.20 a dozen. But we have to factor in around 4 months of them not laying during the winter. So for laying months, that brings the feed price to around $60/mo or $4.80 a dozen. So yeah, at current prices, it's worth it for us. I also haven…

Out of curiosity why not grow your own feed? In many cases you can cycle the compost back in to the feed you grow (as fertilizer). Around here our eggs are averaging about $9 per 12 on the shelves, and you can't buy just 12, the only eggs on the shelf are the 18/24 packs so about $20-22 per pack, almost the same price as choice meat.

It's two 40lb bags. We don't have enough square feet to grow that much feed per month (and still have room for the other stuff we grow).

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

#48
I live in an urban area and have ten chickens. They are nice to have but it is a hobby and nowhere close to economical. And with bird flu I had to spend another decent chunk of money on a much larger & covered run, since we no longer let them roam our yard during the day. We bought nice Omlet coops so there are certainly ways to do it more cheaply than we did, but even so it will take most people years to break even, and chickens need at least weekly maintenance.

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

#49

We have raised a few hens at our hobby farm over the years. The eggs are nice and all, but they're actually quite fragile animals, and then you go and get attached to them and they get suddenly sick and slowly die on you in horrible ways. And veterinary care for backyard chickens is seriously problematic and difficult to get and expensive. My wife fell seriously in love with keeping chickens and it kind of emotionall…

Yes, raising animals requires the mindset of… raising animals. They’re not pets and life happens to them which most people are very disconnected from these days.

It requires a level of detachment not everyone can accomplish. I brought them home, thinking that's how it would be. My wife fell in love with them, and basically stole them from me. And then it's been years of tears.

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

#50
post #22

Wild birds will bring bird flu to your backyard flock too. It takes a lot of eggs to pay for even a $200 coop + bedding and buying the actual birds. I don't regret it 4 years in, but don't do it for the economics.

Unless you see it as hobby and have fun doing it, you also would have to factor in your work effort.
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