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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?

#781

Post by cudgy »

bee_rider wrote: post #551
cudgy wrote: post #442

How many eggs do most people even buy? Almost every story is talking about eggs and how much of a burden it is on the public, but what are we talking about here? I can buy 18 fancy Vital Farms pasture raised eggs for $12. How is such a small purchase so important in the financial press? The whole thing is just completely silly. The focus should be on the true cost drivers like healthcare, insurance, child care, and h…

It was an election thing, right? It was not really plausible for Republicans to say they are going to do something about healthcare or insurance (I mean, hopefully that isn’t controversial—it isn’t like they are lying about that, healthcare just isn’t part of their platform). It was a folksy way to complain about the economy under Biden without complaining about capitalism. Now it is a folksy way for Democrats to com…

This is a reasonable take on the nonsense. “Look at the awful burden of spending $10 more a month on eggs is doing to the average family!” … meanwhile huge landlord conglomerates are colluding on rent prices (via third party apps of course), raising rents, and gobbling up housing in the hottest growth areas.

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

#782

Post by seanmcdirmid »

memsom wrote: post #526
abtinf wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 remov…

Europe vaccinates their chickens for salmonella I think (vs pasteurization in the states). They might be vaccinating them for bird flu as well, the USA just culls an entire flock if they find an infection in the flock.

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

#783

Post by solarmist »

kelnos wrote: post #773
solarmist wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m speaking as a human looking at the historical context of eating animals. Predators taste terrible because they are high effort, low reward in terms of nutritional value.

I am absolutely not advocating that we start eating pets. I would feel terrible about it too. And if I have an option, besides starving to death, I would take it.

The other reason why predators have become pets is because they had a strong additive value in terms of hunting or protection. Dogs in term protection, and hunting and cats in terms of pest control. Groups with these kind of pets tended to fair better.

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

#784

Post by retrac »

bambax wrote: post #777
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…

> we don't eat breakfast

Eggs are a traditional breakfast/brunch food. Quite a few people have an egg (or two) every single day.

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

#786

Post by Rodeoclash »

zhengyi13 wrote: post #780
freddie_mercury wrote: post #764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Probably cost previously, certainly ideology now

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

#787

Post by Reasoning »

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…

> 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.

But definitionally a vegetarian is someone who abstain from eating meat period, regardless of the source. Someone can avoid eating unethically sourced meat but still eat ethically sourced meat and thus definitionally not be a vegetarian. So it's fair to assume that ethical vegetarians (those who practice it for ethical reasons) believe that all meat consumption is unethical. Otherwise they wouldn't be vegetarians.

I acknowledge there is probably a caveat of people who practice vegetarianism because they don't believe they can find ethically sourced meat and thus forgo meat consumption entirely. I find that strange though as cage free meat is pretty widely sold, at least in the USA per my experience.

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

#788

Post by decimalenough »

kelnos wrote: post #744
UberFly wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your sample size of one isn't that relevant to the previous comment.

Wouldn't that situation be fairly common for backyard chickens? I feel like most people who keep chickens in their backyard aren't going to have contact with other chickens. The exception would be a neighborhood/community where a lot of people have backyard chickens. But even then, wouldn't the chance of infection still be low?

Completely enclosed runs and coops are very much the exception to the rule. Most backyard chickens are just fenced off (they can't really fly after all), meaning they're exposed to other birds.

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

#790

Post by burnished »

latexr wrote: post #192
burnished wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Past generations of my family used to name animals that they raised for meat after dishes they could end up in. There are practices people can engage in to distance themselves from the animals they interact with. But also some people who raise animald for meat hire a person to collect them for slaughter in part because of the emotional toll involved. As to your last question.. I think you might be confused? People do…

> 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…

That is pretty much just fruit. Vegetables are typically either the whole body of the plant (like carrots) or a vital part.
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