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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?

#521

Post by blakeburch »

aj_icracked wrote: post #455

Backyard chickens FTW! I sold my last company iCracked (W12) and have been automating my coop for fun for the last 15 years. I have always wanted to build a company at the intersection of smart home / AI meets backyard agriculture with the end goal of building the world's largest decentralized food production system. So we started Coop with the goal of making backyard chickens approachable to anyone with a backyard.…

Cool idea and tech! The idea of "plug and play" for chicken ownership is pretty novel. Bet my parents would love the smart cameras.

For EggsteinAI, did y'all build with CV tools like Roboflow? Or completely custom process? Would probably make for a fun read.

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

#522

Post by genewitch »

I am going today to buy 6 chicks, as i was told all 4 hatcheries in my area were producing chicks for sale this week. I was told they would be $5-$12 depending on the breed.

I was concerned because of the culling last year (over 130,000,000 fowl culled in 2024, before the election, even! weird!) that it might be hard to get new chicks, but as i was told

> Chickens lay a lot of eggs

in the US farm to table is 60-90 days for eggs, that's why we wash them and refrigerate them. Yard eggs you don't wash, and only keep "cool" like room temp, until you're ready to use them then you wash them with a foodsafe sanitizer (or dawn if you're making boiled eggs) and prepare.

130 million chickens et al killed prior to november of 2024, and 90 days to the home? looks like this will let up around mardi gras.

I wonder who will take credit? because, here's the secret: It's the chickens.

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

#524

Post by raisedbyninjas »

dotancohen wrote: post #258
numba888 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That's what cervical dislocation is. The cervix is the neck. You're dislocating the head from the body, via the neck.

AFAICT, biologists didn't screw up and give two different body parts the same name. Neck bones are called cervical vertebrae.

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

#525

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#526

Post by memsom »

abtinf wrote: post #470
memsom wrote: 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.

Okay, so update - we went to the local Morrisons (another chain) over lunch and got 18 eggs (they are sold from trays that you box yourself, but we just took half a tray) for £5.40 (so, what? US$6.82) The eggs are sold by the egg too, 0.30 each, so we could have bought any number we wanted really. They are also free-range. Remember too, in Europe eggs don't need to be refrigerated because we don't treat then to remove the outer layer.

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

#527

Post by financetechbro »

abtinf wrote: post #470
memsom wrote: 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.

I don’t think it’s fair to compare Costco prices with local grocery store prices. Not apples to apples

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

#528

Post by veidr »

AlexandrB wrote: post #429
latexr wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being vegetarian doesn't exclude you from the necessity of killing in order to live. You're just killing forms of life that you emphasize with less, which is very reasonable and rational but also not materially different. That’s like saying you kill chickens to eat eggs. You don’t kill a plant to eat its fruit. In fact, plants benefit from animals eating what they produce, be it oranges or tomatoes or something els…

The dark truth about keeping chickens and many other poultry is that they hatch in an approximately 1:1 male:female ratio, but can't be kept in that ratio without severe conflict and stress. Thus, hatching chickens to keep for egg-laying requires killing most of the male chicks. So yes, you have to kill chickens to eat eggs.

The "severe conflict and stress" part may be hard to understand for the cityfolk; you have to kill chickens to eat eggs, or else they will do it.

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

#529

Post by [deleted] »

erfgh wrote: post #341
somenameforme wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just the circle of life. Live in a remotely rural area with animals around and you're going to see pretty regular death. For instance foxes are beautiful, extremely intelligent, and amazing animals. They'll also systematically and sadistically kill literally every single chicken inside a henhouse, one by one, if they get in. In another instance a dog I loved more than anything as a child to young adult was kille…

Ease cannot be used to ethically justify an action. But even so, you ignore that, according to research, people who eat meat have worse health than people who don't.

[deleted]

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

#530

Post by amonon »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #446
crazygringo wrote: post #372

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.

To be fair, food was very difficult to come upon historically. Killing an animal and not eating it was equivalent to burning money for fun. Vegetarianism (voluntary) didn't become more than an edge case until food was heavily commoditized and readily available.

This rings more true for me. Food simply used to be a lot more expensive.

"Between 1960 and 2000, the average share of Americans’ disposable personal income (DPI) spent on food fell from 17.0 percent to 9.9 percent." [1]

I am not going to look for a source right now but I would venture that since the 1960's were part of the industrial era that food was even more expensive before the creation of the Haber process and gas powered farm tools.

[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2020/november/average-s...

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