I loved having our 6 chickens, but they do take some work to take care of.
Alternatively, we could ensure that government policy doesn't do this in the first place.
Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
471–480 of 879 posts
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#472Earlier quoted context omitted.
My mom has a dozen backyard chickens and I agree with all of these. I'll tack on two bits from my own experience: Good: Fresh unwashed eggs don't need to be refrigerated. They are perfectly safe at room temperature on the shelf for days. Bad: You can't leave them with other pets without supervision. One of the dogs got himself a taste for chicken and already ate at least three. You can't train this out of the dog, un…
> You can't train this out of the dog, unfortunately. Speaking from experience, I can say "Yes, you absolutely can train this out of a dog." However, it is not easy and it is only marginally more easy if you start at a young age of the dog. Furthermore, there are breeds that have no interest in chickens at all, anyway. LGD may actually even protect them.
Totally fair. Unfortunately this dog is a 4 years old black lab and we don't have the capacity to train him out of it. We manage it by keeping him indoors when we let the chickens free range in the yard.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I said: science is not unanimous regarding that, but I think my other arguments are more important. And personally I don't care about the debate around the nutritional value of eggs. I just avoid animal products because I don't want to contribute to the hell that animal agriculture is.
You mentioned it, so I addressed it. Personally I am just choosy about where I purchase my animal products. You can visit some farms yourself. Of course if you're of a certain disposition, you won't want to do that anyway.
“Some farms”. That’s the crux. I would not believe the "small family farm is OK" myth.
If only people would be exposed to what’s really going on anywhere else in enormous & secretive animal industry - not just some cherry picked farms, it would paint a completely different picture.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#474As 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 really smart and curious animals. They can also learn from each other new behaviour, like eating unfamiliar food, or hunting for small animals (the cries of joy from our cock once he finally got a frog!!!) They also have really marked personalities, once you spend some time with them.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#475Earlier quoted context omitted.
As I said: science is not unanimous regarding that, but I think my other arguments are more important. And personally I don't care about the debate around the nutritional value of eggs. I just avoid animal products because I don't want to contribute to the hell that animal agriculture is.
You mentioned it, so I addressed it. Personally I am just choosy about where I purchase my animal products. You can visit some farms yourself. Of course if you're of a certain disposition, you won't want to do that anyway.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#476Sadly, because the soil are too polluted by PFAS, it is adviced against to eat your own eggs (by medical authorities) where I live (larger paris aera) https://www.iledefrance.ars.sante.fr/polluants-organiques-pe...
This adds costly pollution tests to the equation, if you want to eat eggs safely. Backyard chickens doesn't sound like a great solution.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#477Earlier quoted context omitted.
It didn't stop me and my family. (Chicken katsu is still one of my favorites dishes.) To be sure, we did not eat our own chickens (just their eggs). Somehow we were able to still mentally distance ourselves from ours and "the others". I was living in San Jose in a dense suburban neighborhood. It became legal to have backyard chickens so I jumped at getting three chickens. (We had three young daughters, see.) One myst…
Everything loves a chicken dinner. Unless you live in a city where the predator population has already been driven out, you are faced with the decision to either let them free roam (and accept a small but steady rate of predation) or keep them penned when not under direct supervision. There's not a third option.
Some sort of goat maybe?
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#478As 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, and are quite intelligent. They did tests on chickens, and apparently they understand the concept of showing restraint on a current action, with the view on having a larger reward later. Something along the lines of: "If you don't eat these grains now, we'll reward you with twice as many grains later". That's something that dogs can't do, for instance.
Maybe the dog just values immediate reward higher even though it understands it could get even more later? How would you control for that?
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Why should they "bat an eye" about killing animals raised on their own land? It's how we've lived since the dawn of time. Death is a part of life. If you think it's wrong to kill animals to eat, I would ask you "By what moral standard?"
This argument would be valid if humanity would continue all practices it has done "since the dawn of time".
We have dropped some practices and we continue with some. We no longer leave the dead to rot, we bury/burn them, and so on. We developed religions, science, etc, and we are in a different era now, our lifestyle has completely changed, we don't have to hunt, don't have to build our own shelters, and we are no longer nomadic.
I am of the opinion that `killing animals` is a practice we can safely stop now, it was a necessity at that time, but right now it is completely optional.
There are various angles to look at this. One is sustainability and another one is morality.
Sustainability: Do you think we have enough animals to feed 8 Billion people on earth meat daily? I hope you know why we had to fallback to agriculture as a source of nutrition. Why most early settlements were started on river banks?
Morality: My moral standard is: Don't kill animals for my own sake of pleasure, kill only what's necessary for my survival, kill only what is there to kill me/hurt me.
So can I "kill" plants?: Yes (Using the term 'kill' wrt plants is just wrong, but I will continue with it for the sake of argument).
How is it morally okay to kill a plant but not okay to kill an animal?:
Let's agree on the definition of an animal. By animal, we all mean the set of (humans, pets, goat, horse, pig, lion, etc), there are no plants in this set. They are in a set called `living_beings`, which will have bacteria, viruses, insects as well (who can be further clubbed into smaller sets). Now my moral standard is "Not kill animals" (Not 'don't kill living beings'). It is on this entire set, not selectively for X or Y, which will be hypocritical. I am applying the same level of morality to everyone in this set. Now coming to plant-based food. First of all vegetarian food is not just plants. It is fruits, vegetables (akin to fruits), seeds, leaves, and other different parts. The plants are not always "killed" unlike when producing meat-based food (except eggs). The plants are "evolutionary hardened",i.e. built for harvesting, they don't die if you pluck a fruit (moreover they drop it naturally). They don't die when you take a flower or take a bunch of leaves (as long as you are within limits). The same can't be said for any animal.
Is the use of pesticides, deforestation, and killing of insects/rodents okay for producing large amounts of vegetarian food?:
No, I am against that but I don't see any other alternative to feed the calorific needs of 8 Billion people on earth. Of course there are other farming practices but they can't be commercialized or don't have high yields. As much as we can, we should try to eat locally sourced items to avoid carbon emissions due to transportation over large distances.
So what will be my ideal world that is according to my moral standards?: Ideally, everyone has a backyard where they can grow their own plant-based food. If you want better nutrition coverage, keep some chicken and eat the eggs. Let the chickens enjoy their lives, doing chicken things.
Will I eat an animal if I am stranded on an island with nothing else to eat?: Yes, at my current level of ego, I would prefer to stay alive by killing and eating the said animal.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#480The 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.
Same play as the meat industry leveraging "data analytics" to fix and sort at https://www.agristats.com/.
[1]https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/four-states-join-jus...
[2]https://farmaction.us/2023/10/12/food-price-fixing-is-still-...