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

821–830 of 879 posts

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

#821

Post by js2 »

rapjr9 wrote: post #816
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.

Here's a rabbit hole to go down: https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/caring/index.html What is a "150-day fallow"?

It means waiting 150 days after eliminating all the chickens in an area for any virus remaining in that area to no longer be viable.

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

#822

Post by jxramos »

asciimov wrote: post #555
redcobra762 wrote: post #436

I genuinely don't understand why the focus is on egg prices. Who out there is paying more than a total of $3-$5/month more in eggs? And no, even to the absolutely poorest among us, that's not a meaningful amount. Yes, egg prices, as a percentage are going up a lot, but as an absolute value? I can get a dozen eggs from Walmart right now for $5.46. That isn't, by any measurement, a lot of money more than I would have p…

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.

They're easy to spot too on account of them not being subject to shrinkflation like other products can. A dozen will be a fixed unit forever I imagine.

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

#823

Post by zoky »

kelipso wrote: post #774
zoky wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Where are you getting that measurement from? A fifth is 750ml, basically a standard sized bottle.

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

#824

Post by tredre3 »

cassepipe wrote: post #696
MostlyStable wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California, which dropped battery caging years ago, has been on of the states most hard hit. The real reason is that the US doesn't vaccinate it's chickens, which it mostly doesn't do because if it did, it couldn't export to several countries.

Can you tell more ? Why does vaccination prevents export ?

> Most U.S. trading partners won't accept exports from countries that allow vaccinations due to concerns that vaccines can mask the presence of the virus.

For what it's worth, America also bans vaccinated poultry imports. There were talks by the USDA to relax the ban when it comes to live animals, but I don't know if it passed.

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

#826

Post by alexthehurst »

kelipso wrote: post #774
zoky wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A “fifth” of alcohol is a 750ml bottle (about a fifth of a gallon). So someone drinking a fifth is drinking more like 15 shots.

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

#827

Post by trog »

captainbland wrote: post #187
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably all the awful and crazy politics around COVID-19 has led directly to the scenario of people really not willing to take new pandemics seriously.

I think the way to think about H5N1 at the current time, for the hyper individualist types who don't care about no pandemic, is that it's like ebola. You really, really don't want to get it (~50% mortality) but you have to do quite specific things to put yourself at risk. One of those things is interacting with outdoor birds on a regular basis. Even in the absence of a pandemic it's just good sense not to expose your…

This is true as long as we don't end up with a mutation that can go from people to people.

I saw this morning that we now have the first cases of rats with H5N1, so... things are going great

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

#828

Post by zargon »

burnished wrote: post #794
zargon wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes 20 to 40 plant calories to raise one calorie of beef. So slaughtering a cow kills 20 to 40 times the number of lives as eating plants directly.

Number of calories !== number of lives

If anything, I would expect the number of insects, small mammals, etc. killed by harvesting animal feed to be higher than that of harvesting crops grown for people, on a caloric basis.

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

#829

Post by crazygringo »

cluckindan wrote: post #749
crazygringo wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get this total misinformation? You're trying to propagate an urban legend. HN is not the place for that.

What are you referring to? Sure, chicken nuggets made mostly of breast or other muscle flesh exist , but you can bet your buns the majority of frozen nuggets are mostly ground skin and mechanically separated meat. In the United States, mechanically separated poultry has been used in poultry products since 1969, after the National Academy of Sciences found it safe.

Chicken nuggets are primarily chicken muscle tissue, end of story.

Yes they can include mechanically separated chicken, which is basically a fancy name for saying they scraped all the meat off the bones. But that isn't "mostly skin and cartilage", it's meat. There may be trace amounts of cartilage and small amounts of skin in it, but they are nowhere near the main components.

If you're still not sure, just look at the protein content of chicken nuggets. The quantity of protein can only come from actual chicken muscle. Skin has little protein and cartilage has virtually none.

There are a lot of urban legends out there about what chicken nuggets are made of. But they're precisely that -- urban legends. They're false.

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

#830

Post by spdgg »

rubidium wrote: post #809
VincentEvans wrote: post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throughout entire human and chicken collective history we somehow haven’t managed to get wiped out by chicken transmitted decease - and suddenly its practically imminent and only massive mega farms can keeps us safe. A thought occurs - perhaps it’s the mega farming that is the root of this problem and having some backyard chickens won’t really move the needle any closer to doom?

Major diseases have been a part of human history throughout. There is no evidence that mega farming is making it worse.

Farming changed radically after the 1950s, so pretty recently. It's pretty reasonable to believe it will. If you've been anywhere near mega livestock operations of any kind then you would know.
Post reply on HN