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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?

#771

Post by ryao »

elevatedastalt wrote: post #671
asciimov wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a time in my life where our household of 2 was regularly going through 3 dozen eggs a week just for breakfast. Back then that would total $5 a week. Today that same amount of eggs are just under $20. It’s not just the eggs, all grocery prices have gone up massively post covid. But eggs prices are easier to spot because they are super inflated thanks to bird flu, and are easy to understand as a necessity.

I'd keep an eye on your lipids if you are consuming 3 eggs every day for months on end. If all turns out great, perfect.

There was a medical student who ate 720 eggs in a month and his blood test numbers actually improved. The idea that consumption of large numbers of eggs is unhealthy was never true.

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

#772

Post by papertokyo »

dowager_dan99 wrote: post #653
jorvi wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

part of Western society ethos is our quick action within any sort of realm to "pick X; be a dick about it"

I absolutely love this characterization of modern discourse.

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

#773

Post by kelnos »

solarmist wrote: post #572
whycome wrote: post #309

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.

The only reason we don't eat dogs or cats is because they don't taste good. Predators don't make for good eating. They have to work too hard physically for their food. It makes their meat tough. That said there are places where dog is eaten usually as a stew because that makes it more tender.

Speak for yourself. I would never eat a cat or dog because to me they are pets, and I would feel terrible doing it.

Whatever they taste like is very very secondary to that.

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

#774

Post by kelipso »

zoky wrote: post #684
shkkmo wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"lied through his teeth" isn't an accurate description. His openness about his history of drunking wasn't ideal and did damage his credibility. However other people have partially reproduced the health effects of what he did and his level of drinking is pretty common in the USA so it's not like he's some crazy outlier.

> His openness about his history of drunking wasn't ideal and did damage his credibility. That’s a euphemism if ever there was one. He was a raging alcoholic, and his alcohol consumption (which he denied entirely) accounted for pretty much all of his negative health effects during the film. > However other people have partially reproduced the health effects of what he did But nobody has been able to reproduce it enti…

Fifth would be 150 ml, so around 3 shots. It’s slightly excessive but I wouldn’t call that raging alcoholism level.

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

#775

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

> - 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. Imagine euthanizing your dog or cat by hand...

I visited a farm as a kid and we had fresh chicken for dinner one day. They had one of those orange road cones with the top cut off a bit to fit the chicken in upside down so they could easily chop off its head. They then run around for awhile after that because their nervous system is still working for a minute or so. Just something to interesting to learn as a 5th grader, I guess.

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

#776

Post by elevatedastalt »

smilliken wrote: post #712
elevatedastalt wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd keep an eye on your lipids if you are consuming 3 eggs every day for months on end. If all turns out great, perfect.

This hypothesis (eggs causing high triglycerides) was disproven in randomized controlled trials. The main cause is refined carbohydrates and insulin resistance.

I wasn't implying high trigs. I don't think anyone today associates eggs with high trigs.

However eggs are high in a) Sat Fat b) Cholesterol.

Sat Fats cause increased LDL, and while dietary Cholesterol for many folks doesn't cause a rise in LDL, for some people who tend to be hyperabsorbers, it does.

So the knee-jerk comment that gets added anytime someone cautions about a high-egg diet isn't very accurate. I very politely suggested testing, and also said that if everything turns out OK then it's fine.

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

#777

Post by bambax »

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…

Yeah, it's really hard for me to understand the thing with eggs. Do people really buy that many eggs? We're a family of 5, cook every day (never buy takeout) and consume, maybe, 6 eggs a month? when we bake cakes? which we do extremely rarely.

We only cook for diner as we don't eat breakfast and everyone's out of the house for lunch, so that may be a reason, but still. It seems a very minor and unimportant ingredient.

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

#778

Post by Reasoning »

kelnos wrote: post #757
vengefulduck wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Nature is not cruel, don't anthropomorphize it. Nature has no free will or emotions or intelligence. It is indeed uncaring, because it doesn't have the capacity to care. Nature is neither good nor bad. It just is. Whether or not it is moral or ethical to eat animals is an arbitrary decision made by emotional beings. There is no right or wrong there, only what people feel. Someone who is vegetarian or vegan for moral…

> Nature is not cruel, don't anthropomorphize it.

You're defining the word cruel to narrowly. Per Merriam-Webster "causing or conducive to injury, grief, or pain" and Cambridge "(of an event) causing suffering". Natural forces can be cruel. So can fate and life.

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

#779

Post by seanmcdirmid »

vessenes wrote: post #636
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…

The egg story in the US is so strange to me. I just checked my local "premium" (Pacific Northwest) grocery store, and free range eggs are $4/dozen. ( https://townandcountrymarkets.com/shop#!/?id=156440568471307... ) I guess US food desert type areas are paying much more from the media surrounding this, but even that price comes with a warning on the website that egg supplies are limited, and presumably therefore the…

The town and country near me is $4.99, so maybe it is more expensive here in Ballard. But the weird thing is that the non-organic/free-range eggs at QFC are $6.99/dozen and they have the same $4.99 dozen that Town and Country has.

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

#780

Post by zhengyi13 »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #764
philco wrote: post #703

This feels like an insane proposition to me, I'll explain: 1. Soaring egg prices are due to culling + deaths related to the proliferation of H5N1 (Avian Flu). 2. The reason we have been proactively culling is to minimize spread AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, to minimize the number of exposures H5N1 could have to Humans. 3. The reason we want to minimize exposure between chickens and humans is because each exposure of an infec…

> The reason we have been proactively culling is to minimize spread AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, to minimize the number of exposures H5N1 could have to Humans. The reason the US has been culling is because they refuse to vaccinate chickens. Even China began vaccinations in 2004 ... over 2 decades ago.

I mean, it'd be absolutely awful if we started having to deal w/ autistic chickens. I can't imagine how the Chinese do it.

Sarcasm aside, if the US isn't vaccinating our birds, what are the drivers for that? Cost concerns?

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