Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?

civileats.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

531–540 of 879 posts

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

#531

Post by svantana »

genewitch wrote: post #522

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 da…

Don't you also need to add to that the time it takes for chickens to get to egg-laying age? Which seems to be 4-5 months.

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

#533

Post by erellsworth »

partitioned wrote: post #490
erellsworth wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why do people always think its the killing? Almost every vegan/vegetarian has most of their issues with how its raised and treated its whole life. The constant meat eater trolling about how its natural to eat meat and animals do it, ignore the fact that its not natural to keep animals in pens where they cant turn around for their entire life that is basically pure torture from birth to death. If all meat was produced…

I mean, it can be both.

Factory farming has been around for more than 100 years. Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906.

The meat industry has done a pretty good job keeping the horrors of slaughter houses out of the public eye, especially in the days before almost everyone was walking around with a video recorder in their pocket.

I'm sure exposure to what's really involved in modern meat production has increased the popularity of veganism, but veganism has been around for at least a thousand years.

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

#534

Post by pstjean »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #434

Prices "soaring" like everything else? I'm sick of these articles that pick one product in isolation and ignore the fact that we're in hyperinflation and it affects products unevenly. (Egg farmers have likely been unable to mitigate bird flu because they artificially kept costs low to avoid shocking the public into abandoning eggs entirely, but now they need to overcompensate because of this random event).

Hyperinflation is defined as a monthly inflation rate exceeding 50%. In the U.S., the latest CPI numbers from January indicate a monthly rate of 0.5%.

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

#535

Post by aziaziazi »

slothtrop wrote: post #425
aziaziazi wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While that’s true in theory, we don’t observe a sufficient fiber intake for most human omnivore. That is Erfgh point : the classic diet don’t meet nutrients goals when studied on the field by researchers.

> we don’t observe a sufficient fiber intake for most human omnivore. This has no bearing on the argument. That is just as true of vegans who purchase boxed products. It's also fairly US-centric. If you observe countries with the longest lifespan, lowest CVD incidence and overall best health outcomes, they consume a more varied whole-foods diet with animal products. > the classic diet This is the Americanized diet of…

I agree that a whole food diet is better than the “boxed” one but I have no comparaison point for the US. I’m from France and many people value whole food, “good products” and cook at home however even those gets diabetes, intestinal and blood cancers and other problems that would be easily avoided with more vegetable consumption. The fact is meat is often the central peace of the dish, second the carbs and then salads, cabbages and roots. People say they loves them but when they are on the plate it’s more a decoration that a portion.

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

#536

Post by osullivj »

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.

Same for dairy cattle: males are redundant. My grandfather was an AI pioneer in the UK in the 1940s. AI being artificial insemination of dairy cattle....

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

#537

Post by vengefulduck »

georgeecollins wrote: post #516
deepvibrations wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. Just like when slaves were commonplace, it was 'normalised' and many people just turned a blind eye.

Everything biological is going to be eaten. Your dog or cat would eat you if you were dead and they were hungry enough. I am not saying we shouldn't evolve past eating meat, it would be great for the environment. But to say that one biological creature eating another biological animal is unethical is an indictment of nature.

I think the problem with this argument is the assumption that nature is inherently good. Nature is cruel and uncaring. Moving beyond it is a good thing imo. We’re just lucky that as a species by the roll of the dice we were given the power by nature to usurp it.

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

#538

Post by TheRealPomax »

Since the title is a question: no, no it's not. Because the primary driver is bird flu, so the odds have never been higher of you buying birds only to have to cull them the next week. Now is the worst time to get your chickens, and the best time to just go "whatever, it's not like we need eggs, we'll start buying them again when we actually have enough chickens in this country to lower prices again".

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

#539

Post by softwaredoug »

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…

I’ve hear another downside is the sheer amount of poop to clean up.

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

#540

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]
Post reply on HN