> Are backyard chickens the answer?
No. Trump is the answer (and DOGE!). Once we get rid of all the DEI/woke/Marxists in government, egg prices will fall. Have faith. Praise Trump!
Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
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Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#582Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#583Earlier quoted context omitted.
People say that all the time, but professional cooks have run triangle tests on backyard/farm eggs vs. store bought eggs and people can't tell the difference. At this point, I don't believe there's a difference in taste. The psychological effects that would lead people to believe that difference exists --- a kind of culinary placebo effect --- are so strong that I just attribute everything to that.
I cannot tell the difference between backyard eggs and fancy store bought (organic, free-range) eggs, but I can tell the difference between that set and industrial store bought eggs.
My expectation is that what you're tasting is the difference between a very fresh egg and an older egg; there's no doubt that's real (older eggs aren't even functionally the same as fresh eggs).
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#584Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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.
You are correct that it used to be even higher. The US BLS estimates around 40% of DPI was spent on food at the turn of the century (1901). [1]
[1] https://www.bls.gov/opub/100-years-of-u-s-consumer-spending....
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#585Earlier 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…
You're a reasonable / pragmatic vegan. Vegans that won't eat meat because of the kill are ideological / dogmatic vegans.
There's even a small amount of vegans that consider lab meat to be something immoral (how they loop their head around that one, I do not know).
I'm currently dating a girl that's vegan and is super chill about it, but when I was 16 I dated a vegan girl also. My mother made two separate dishes for her, one specifically with esoteric stuff she would like (Christmas being special and all that). Then my mother made the mistake of quickly flipping some burning food with some meat in it, then using the same spatula to muddle the vegan dish. That girlfriend immediately said she would not eat that dish.
I nearly decided to break up with her at that moment.
I'm never quite sure it it's anecdata, but it always feels like there are much more obnoxiously stringent vegans than there are obnoxious meat eaters.
On the other hand, I've seen firsthand how vegans have to consistently defend their lifestyle choice, because by making that choice they reveal the "default" was never really that. Same with those who chose to be sober.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#586Earlier quoted context omitted.
People say that all the time, but professional cooks have run triangle tests on backyard/farm eggs vs. store bought eggs and people can't tell the difference. At this point, I don't believe there's a difference in taste. The psychological effects that would lead people to believe that difference exists --- a kind of culinary placebo effect --- are so strong that I just attribute everything to that.
Honestly, does it matter? If raising the chickens that yield your eggs makes your breakfasts more enjoyable, is physical vs psychological causality relevant? The important thing here is enjoyment of our food.
It does not matter, outside of the context of a message board, where it is of grave importance.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#587Earlier 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.
People also have been publicly maiming and killing other people for vengeance and entertainment for millennia. Morality really does evolve. That includes animals as well.
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#588Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modest egg consumption has a negligible impact on cholesterol. Most blood cholesterol is produced by your liver, impacted far more by other variables. Eggs are also not that high in fat.
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.
What is wrong about raising chickens in your own backyard and giving them a full eventful life?
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#589Earlier quoted context omitted.
Admittedly this is pedantry on my part, but isn’t this only true for fruits? GP’s argument seems perfectly valid for e.g. carrots or mushrooms.
Mushrooms are “fruits”. The “plant” itself is the mycelium underground and the mushroom is the “fruity” part which is produced to spread the “seeds” (spores). And fruits are broader than most people think. Many of the things you think as vegetables are fruits: pumpkins, zucchinis, tomatoes. But even outside fruits there is food you can harvest without harming the plant, like potatoes. And we haven’t even gotten into…
Hah of course you're 100% right on mushrooms - that totally slipped my mind. Am I completely out to lunch on root vegetables though?
Re: Egg prices are soaring. Are backyard chickens the answer?
#590Earlier quoted context omitted.
I killed so many slugs eating my broccoli it started to get to me. I technically didn't kill them myself, I put the cannibals in a bucket together. 1/3 to 1/2 bucket per day. About 30 full buckets for 20 broccoli plants of which about 8 were ruined.
Same. Buckets upon buckets. You can’t even feed them to the chickens, critters who eat literally anything won‘t eat slugs.
Ducks love slugs, oddly.