Live data from Hacker News

Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

civileats.com

461–470 of 879 posts

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

#461

no, bird flu can still infect your backyard flock

But the culls are smaller, and so the impact lessened. The problem becomes more distributed. This is the chief reason why Canada's egg prices have remained sane while the US has exploded. It's not like we don't have bird flu here and we haven't had culls. We just have smaller flocks. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/egg-prices-avian-flu-canada-u... Still, backyard chickens are a hobby, for if you like chickens. It will…

I'd rather not risk having a bunch of sick animals to deal with to save a couple dollars personally

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

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been keeping intelligent animals like chickens, pigs, and cattle for millennia. And continuing to eat them. Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms, and meat and poultry were something you bought in pieces, plastic-wrapped.

It makes sense to me. If you grow up seeing animals slaughtered on the regular you probably won't think much of it, especially when the adults around you treat it as completely normal. You grow up in an environment where you might think meat comes from the magic meat factory, when you see an animal slaughtered for the first time it's likely to be shocking enough to turn a lot of people away.

I grew up buying meat and never seeing farms. About 7 years ago, I helped my sister/BIL raise a flock from hatchling to food. We did everything.

Having actually slaughtered and butchered chickens I raised, I'd rather raise my own. I know the chickens I raised had a better life and death than factory farmed chickens.

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

#465
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still going to come back to a child who's learned "Real chicken nuggets come in dinosaur shapes, are very salty, have a uniform breading, and don't require teeth to chew". He's going to think your dish doesn't quality.

Going through the school system (private pre-K/K and public) was really what changed my kids' eating habits. Once they get used to the school nuggets and pizza, it's hard to "unlearn". They were more diverse eaters as young kids and ended more picky and narrow in their food choices. It's why pizza is the staple of every kids' birthday party.

I believe this is a difficult problem for schools. They need to have food that meets the standards (as they are defined), appealing enough to 6 through {age} range to have them eat it, something that can be prepared with relatively low skill demands, and something that can be prepared easily in the quantities needed with the kitchen staff provided.

That really gets down to reheated chicken nuggets, pizza, and other classic school lunches.

The alternative would be to have a school that has a sufficiently large and trained kitchen staff to prepare diverse food, make sure that the food selection that they have meets the requirements (and that the kids aren't just eating the deserts).

I'm recalling back to my school food eating days and the kitchen had four people - two serving, one cooking, one cleaning.

High school had two or three in the cafeteria - and they were constantly putting out the fast food equivalent food items. I can't even remember if there were salads (if there were, I don't think I ever ate them). [Burger, deep fried [fish, shrimp, chicken], French fries] was my lunches for four years.

Though I'm also not entirely sure that schools are to blame for the narrowing of food preference with kids. They don't help, but I'm not entirely sure they are to blame.

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

#466
post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 multi…

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 eat sunflower-seeds, as sunflowers murder one another by throwing shade.

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

#467
post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's definitely _not_ the _monetary_ solution Does this also take into account the current price of eggs in the same product category? i.e., organic, free-range eggs? For current Erewhon prices, 8 eggs a day is $11.30 in free eggs a day, so $339 in eggs a month? https://erewhon.com/subcategory/33022/eggs - $16.99 a dozen

I'm not who you're replying to... but: it cost me $2-2.5k to build my coop two years ago which houses 5 hens, and they cost roughly $10-20 per month to feed, change bedding, etc. Realistically my household eats 4 dozen eggs a month. Even with current egg prices I'm not saving any money for a long, long time. Still absolutely worthwhile for my mentally though and one of my major life goals

>I'm not who you're replying to... but: it cost me $2-2.5k to build my coop two years ago which houses 5 hens

These numbers are absurd. You need a wooden box and some chicken wire, and chicks cost less than $1/bird. I don't understand why this always comes up on HN, where people are spending thousands of dollars on chickens. It's the simplest animal you can possibly own and they should pay for themselves almost immediately.

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

#468

Backyard chickens are great if you have the space, time, and patience, but they're hardly a solution to systemic issues... The real fix is a more diversified, resilient supply chain... And not just pushing food production onto individuals

I am reminded of https://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/great-leap-forwar...

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

#469

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.

People have been keeping intelligent animals like chickens, pigs, and cattle for millennia. And continuing to eat them. Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms, and meat and poultry were something you bought in pieces, plastic-wrapped.

> Ironically, vegetarianism really only started to become popular in the Western world once people lost their connection to farms

A classic case of mixing up correlation with causation?

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

#470
post #184

Wow! I wondered about this article - US centric. I wondered because eggs are not expensive here. I just looked [1] [2]. I can get a dozen free range for about US$4 at the current conversion rate. They are a supermarket own brand, but even the "fancy" ones are something like that for 6, but some are actually still close to $4 for 12. The US chicken market (not necessarily eggs specifically) was in the Morgan Spurlock…

That is expensive.

Typically at Costco, 5 dozen eggs is under $12, sometimes as low as $8. Currently it is closer to $20, which is about your price.

Post reply on HN